THE  LIBRARY 

OF 
THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 
LOS  ANGELES 


PLAYS,  ACTING,  AND  MUSIC. 


PLAYS,  ACTING,   AND   MUSIC  :    BY 
ARTHUR  SYMONS. 


NEW  YORK  :  E.  P.  BUTTON  ftf  CO. 


To  Maurice  Maeterlinck,  in  friendship  and 
admiration. 

College 
Library 

Pf\) 

£021 


1  395393 


Most  of  these  chapters,  not  quite  in  their  present  form, 
appeared  in  the  Academy  during  1902  ;  some  in  the  Star, 
during  1901  and  1902  ;  and  a  few  elsewhere.  They 
express  some  of  my  ideas  about  the  theatre  and  about  music, 
and  are  not  intended  as  a  record  of  events.  Thus  I  have 
not  arranged  them  in  chronological  order,  because  the  dates 
of  particular  performances  have  no  longer  any  significance ; 
but  I  have  frankly  left  all  references  to  "  last  week,"  and  the 
like,  as  I  found  them,  because  that  will  help  to  show  that  I 
am  speaking  of  a  particular  thing,  immediately  under  my  eyes. 
That  particular  thing  is  sometimes  of  no  interest  in  itself ; 
but  it  is  my  peg,  and  I  wish  it  to  stand  £rmly  in  its  place. 
The  book  is  intended  to  form  part  of  a  series,  on  which  I 
have  been  engaged  for  many  years.  I  am  gradually  working 
my  way  towards  the  concrete  expression  of  a  theory,  or 
system  of  aesthetics,  of  all  the  arts.  In  my  book  on  "  The 
Symbolist  Movement  in  Literature  "  I  made  a  first  attempt 
to  deal  in  this  way  with  literature  ;  other  volumes,  now  in 
preparation,  are  to  follow.  The  present  volume  deals 
mainly  with  the  stage,  and,  secondarily,  with  music  ;  it  is  to 
be  followed  by  a  volume  called  "  Studies  in  the  Seven  Arts," 
in  which  music  will  be  dealt  with  in  greater  detail,  side  by 
side  with  painting,  sculpture,  architecture,  handicraft,  dancing, 
and  the  various  arts  of  the  stage.  And,  as  life  too  is  a  form 
of  art,  and  the  visible  world  the  chief  storehouse  of  beauty, 
I  try  to  indulge  my  curiosity  by  the  study  of  places  and  of 
people.  A  book  on  "  Cities "  is  now  in  the  press,  and  a 
book  of  "  imaginary  portraits  "  is  to  follow,  under  the  title  of 
"  Spiritual  Adventures."  Side  by  side  with  these  studies  in 
the  arts  I  have  my  own  art,  that  of  verse,  which  is,  after  all, 
my  chief  concern. 


In  all  my  critical  and  theoretical  writing  I  wish  to  be  as 
little  abstract  as  possible,  and  to  study  first  principles,  not  so 
much  as  they  exist  in  the  brain  of  the  theorist,  but  as  they 
may  be  discovered,  alive  and  in  effective  action,  in  every 
achieved  form  of  art.  I  do  not  understand  the  limitation  by 
which  so  many  writers  on  aesthetics  choose  to  confine  them- 
selves to  the  study  of  artistic  principles  as  they  are  seen  in 
this  or  that  separate  form  of  art.  Each  art  has  its  own 
laws,  its  own  capacities,  its  own  limits ;  these  it  is  the 
business  of  the  critic  jealously  to  distinguish.  Yet,  in  the 
study  of  art  as  art,  it  should  be  his  endeavour  to  master  the 
universal  science  of  beauty. 

July  1903. 


A  Paradox  on  Art :  p.  i . 

Technique  and  the  Artist:  p.  5. 

Nietzsche  on  Tragedy :  p.  9. 

A  Reflection  at  a  Dolmetsch  Concert:  p.  13. 

The  Dramatisation  of  Song:  p.  18. 

The  Speaking  of  Verse:  p.  23. 

Sarah  Bernhardt:  p.  27. 

Rostand,  Sarah,  and  Coquelin:  p.  34. 

Coquelin  and  Moliere:  p.  39. 

Rejane  and  Jane  Hading :  p.  44. 

Sir  Henry  Irving:  p.  48. 

Duse  in  some  of  her  Parts:  p.  53. 

Pachmann,  "Parsifal,"  and  the  Pathetic  Symphony:  p.  64. 

Pachmann  and  the  Piano:  p.  68. 

Maeterlinck,  "  Everyman,"  and  the  Japanese  Players:  p.  72. 

Music,  Staging,  and  some  Acting:  p.  78. 

The  Test  of  the  Actor :  p.  84. 

Tolstoi  and  the  Others:  p.  88. 

Literary  Drama:  p.  94. 

Mr.  Stephen  Phillips  and  a  Lecture:  p.  99. 

Some  Plays  and  the  Public:  p.  105. 

"Ben  Hur"  on  the  Stage:  p.  109. 

"  Faust "  at  the  Lyceum :  p.  113. 

Yvette  Guilbert:  p.  117. 

The  Paris  Music  Hall :  p.  123. 


An  Actress  and  a  Play:  p.  127. 

A  Comedy  of  Fine  Shades:  p.  130. 

Drama:  Professional  and  Unprofessional:  p.  134. 

M.  Capus  in  England:  p.  138. 

A  Double  Enigma:  p.  142. 

Three  Problem  Plays:  p.  146. 

"  Monna  Vanna  " :  p.  153. 

The  Question  of  Censorship :  p.  157. 

Music  in  the  Theatre:  p.  160. 

On  Crossing  Stage  to  Right:  p.  165. 

Suggestions  to  Managers:  p.  169. 

The  Price  of  Realism :  p.  173. 

On  Musical  Criticism:  p.  177. 

The  Meiningen  Orchestra:  p.  181. 

The  New  Bayreuth:  p.  185. 

Mozart  in  the  Mirabell-Garten  :  p.  189. 

An  Apology  for  Puppets:  p.  193. 


Eleonora   Duse   at    22.     From    a    photograph  by  Bettini, 

Leghorn  :  frontispiece. 

Ysaye.     From  a  lithograph  by  Emil  Fuchs  :  to  face  p.  5. 
Georgette  Leblanc.     From  a  photograph  by  Gerschel,  Paris  : 

to  face  p.  1 8. 

Sarah  Bernhardt.     From  a  photograph  :  to  face  p.  27. 
Coquelin  ain6.     From  a  lithograph  by  W.  Rothenstein  :   to 

face  p.  39. 

Rejane.     From  a  photograph  by  Reutlinger  :  to  face  p.  44. 
Jane  Hading.     From  a  photograph  by  Chalot,  Paris  :  to 

face  p.  46. 
Wladimir  von  Pachmann.     From    a  photograph   by  Paul 

Gericke,  Berlin  :  to  face  p.  68. 
Sada    Yacco.     From    a    photograph    by   George   Hooper, 

London  :  to  face  p.  76. 
Yvette  Guilbert.     From  a  photograph  by  Chalot,  Paris  :  to 

face  p.  117. 


A  Paradox  on  Art. 

Is  it  not  part  of  the  pedantry  of  letters  to  limit  the  word  art, 
a  little  narrowly,  to  certain  manifestations  of  the  artistic 
spirit,  or,  at  all  events,  to  set  up  a  comparative  estimate  of 
the  values  of  the  several  arts,  a  little  unnecessarily  ?  Litera- 
ture, painting,  sculpture,  music,  these  we  admit  as  art,  and 
the  persons  who  work  in  them  as  artists  ;  but  dancing,  for 
instance,  in  which  the  performer  is  at  once  creator  and  inter- 
preter, and  those  methods  of  interpretion,  such  as  the  playing 
of  musical  instruments,  or  the  conducting  of  an  orchestra, 
or  acting,  have  we  scrupulously  considered  the  degree  to 
which  these  also  are  art,  and  their  executants,  in  a  strict  sense, 
artists  ? 

If  we  may  be  allowed  to  look  upon  art  as  something 
essentially  independent  of  its  material,  however  dependent 
upon  its  own  material  each  art  may  be,  in  a  secondary  sense, 
it  will  scarcely  be  logical  to  contend  that  the  motionless  and 
permanent  creation  of  the  sculptor  in  marble  is,  as  art,  more 
perfect  than  the  same  sculptor's  modelling  in  snow,  which, 
motionless  one  moment,  melts  the  next,  or  than  the  dancer's 
harmonious  succession  of  movements  which  we  have  not 
even  time  to  realise  individually  before  one  is  succeeded  by 
another,  and  the  whole  has  vanished  from  before  our  eyes. 
Art  is  the  creation  of  beauty  in  form,  visible  or  audible,  and 
the  artist  is  the  creator  of  beauty  in  visible  or  audible  form. 
But  beauty  is  infinitely  various,  and  as  truly  beauty  in  the 
voice  of  Sarah  Bernhardt  or  the  silence  of  Duse  as  in  a  face 
painted  by  Leonardo  or  a  poem  written  by  Blake.  A  dance, 
performed  faultlessly  and  by  a  dancer  of  temperament,  is  as 


A  Paradox  on  Art. 

beautiful,  in  its  own  way,  as  a  performance  on  the  violin  by 
Ysaye  or  the  effect  of  an  orchestra  conducted  by  Richter. 
In  each  case  the  beauty  is  different,  but,  once  we  have  really 
attained  beauty,  there  can  be  no  question  of  superiority. 
Beauty  is  always  equally  beautiful ;  the  degrees  exist  only 
when  we  have  not  yet  attained  beauty. 

And  thus  the  old  prejudice  against  the  artist  to  whom 
interpretation  in  his  own  special  form  of  creation  is  really 
based  upon  a  misunderstanding.  Take  the  art  of  music. 
Bach  writes  a  composition  for  the  violin :  that  composition 
exists,  in  the  abstract,  the  moment  it  is  written  down  upon 
paper,  but,  even  to  those  trained  musicians  who  are  able  to 
read  at  sight,  it  exists  in  a  state  at  best  but  half  alive  ;  to  all 
the  rest  of  the  world  it  is  silent.  Ysaye  plays  it  on  his 
violin,  and  the  thing  begins  to  breathe,  has  found  a  voice 
perhaps  more  exquisite  than  the  sound  which  Bach  heard 
in  his  brain  when  he  wrote  down  the  notes.  Take  the 
instrument  out  of  Ysaye's  hands,  and  put  it  into  the  hands  of 
the  first  violin  in  the  orchestra  behind  him  ;  every  note  will 
be  the  same,  the  same  general  scheme  of  expression  may  be 
followed,  but  the  thing  that  we  shall  hear  will  be  another 
thing,  just  as  much  Bach,  perhaps,  but,  because  Ysaye  is 
wanting,  not  the  work  of  art,  the  creation,  to  which  we  have 
just  listened. 

That  such  art  should  be  fragile,  evanescent,  leaving  only 
a  memory  which  can  never  be  realised  again,  is  as  pathetic 
and  as  natural  as  that  a  beautiful  woman  should  die  young. 
To  the  actor,  the  dancer,  the  same  fate  is  reserved.  They 
work  for  the  instant,  and  for  the  memory  of  the  living,  with 
a  supremely  prodigal  magnanimity.  Old  people  tell  us  that 


A  Paradox  on  Art. 

they  have  seen  Descl6e,  Taglioni ;  soon,  no  one  will  be  old 
enough  to  remember  those  great  artists.  Then,  if  their 
renown  becomes  a  matter  of  charity,  of  credulity,  if  you  will, 
it  will  be  but  equal  with  the  renown  of  all  those  poets  and 
painters  who  are  only  names  to  us,  or  whose  masterpieces 
have  perished. 

Beauty  is  infinitely  various,  always  equally  beautiful, 
and  can  never  be  repeated.  Gautier,  in  a  famous  poem,  has 
wisely  praised  the  artist  who  works  in  durable  material : 

Oui,  1'ceuvre  sort  plus  belle 
D'une  forme  au  travail 

Rebelle, 
Vers,  marbre,  onyx,  email. 

No,  not  more  beautiful ;  only  more  lasting. 

Tout  passe.     L'art  robuste 
Seul  a  1'eternite'. 

Le  buste 
Survit  a  la  cite. 

Well,  after  all,  is  there  not,  to  one  who  regards  it 
curiously,  a  certain  selfishness,  even,  in  this  desire  to  per- 
petuate oneself  or  the  work  of  one's  hands  ;  as  the  most 
austere  saints  have  found  selfishness  at  the  root  of  the  soul's 
too  conscious,  or  too  exclusive,  longing  after  eternal  life  ? 
To  have  created  beauty  for  an  instant  is  to  have  achieved  an 
equal  result  in  art  with  one  who  has  created  beauty  which 
will  last  many  thousands  of  years.  Art  is  concerned  only 
with  accomplishment,  not  with  duration.  The  rest  is  a 
question  partly  of  vanity,  partly  of  business.  An  artist  to 

3 


A  Paradox  on  Art. 

whom  posterity  means  anything  very  definite,  and  the 
admiration  of  those  who  will  live  after  him  can  seem  to 
promise  much  warmth  in  the  grave,  may  indeed  refuse  to 
waste  his  time,  as  it  seems  to  him,  over  temporary  successes. 
Or  he  may  shrink  from  the  continuing  ardour  of  one  to 
whom  art  has  to  be  made  over  again  with  the  same  energy, 
the  same  sureness,  every  time  that  he  acts  on  the  stage  or 
draws  music  out  of  his  instrument.  One  may  indeed  be 
listless  enough  to  prefer  to  have  finished  one's  work,  and  to 
be  able  to  point  to  it,  as  it  stands  on  its  pedestal,  or  comes 
to  meet  all  the  world,  with  the  democratic  freedom  of  the 
book.  All  that  is  a  natural  feeling  in  the  artist,  but  it  has 
nothing  to  do  with  art.  Art  has  to  do  only  with  the 
creation  of  beauty,  whether  it  be  in  words,  or  sounds,  or 
colour,  or  outline,  or  rhythmical  movement;  and  the  man 
who  writes  music  is  no  more  truly  an  artist  than  the  man 
who  plays  that  music,  the  poet  who  composes  rhythms  in 
words  no  more  truly  an  artist  than  the  dancer  who 
composes  rhythms  with  the  body,  and  the  one  is  no  more 
to  be  preferred  to  the  other,  than  the  painter  is  to  be 
preferred  to  the  sculptor,  or  the  musician  to  the  poet,  in 
those  forms  of  art  which  we  have  agreed  to  recognise  as  of 
equal  value. 


Technique  and  the  Artist. 

TECHNIQUE  and  the  artist :  that  is  a  question,  of  interest  to 
the  student  of  every  art,  which  was  brought  home  to  me 
with  unusual  emphasis  the  other  afternoon,  as  I  sat  in  the 
Queen's  Hall,  and  listened  to  Ysaye  and  Busoni.  Are  we 
always  quite  certain  what  we  mean  when  we  speak  of  an 
artist  ?  Have  we  quite  realised  in  our  own  minds  the  extent 
to  which  technique  must  go  to  the  making  of  an  artist, 
and  the  point  at  which  something  else  must  be  superadded  ? 
That  is  a  matter  which  I  often  doubt,  and  the  old  doubt 
came  back  to  my  mind  the  other  afternoon,  as  I  listened 
to  Ysaye  and  Busoni,  and  next  day,  as  I  turned  over  the 
newspapers. 

I  read,  in  the  first  paper  I  happen  to  take  up,  that  the 
violinist  and  the  pianist  are  "  a  perfectly  matched  pair  "  ; 
the  applause,  at  the  concert,  was  even  more  enthusiastic  for 
Busoni  than  for  Ysaye.  I  hear  both  spoken  of  as  artists, 
as  great  artists ;  and  yet,  if  words  have  any  meaning,  it 
seems  to  me  that  only  one  of  the  two  is  an  artist  at  all,  and 
the  other,  with  all  his  ability,  only  an  executant.  Admit, 
for  a  moment,  that  the  technique  of  the  two  is  equal,  though 
it  is  not  quite  possible  to  admit  even  that,  in  the  strictest 
sense.  So  far,  we  have  made  only  a  beginning.  Without 
technique,  perfect  of  its  kind,  no  one  is  worth  consideration 
in  any  art.  The  rope-dancer  or  the  acrobat  must  be  perfect 
in  technique  before  he  appears  on  the  stage  at  all ;  in  his 
case,  a  lapse  from  perfection  brings  its  own  penalty,  death 
perhaps  ;  his  art  begins  when  his  technique  is  already  per- 
fect. Artists  who  deal  in  materials  less  fragile  than  human 


Technique  and  the  Artist. 

life  should  have  no  less  undeviating  a  sense  of  responsibility 
to  themselves  and  to  art.  But  the  performance  comes 
afterwards,  and  it  is  the  performance  with  which  we  are 
concerned.  Of  two  acrobats,  each  equally  skilful,  one 
will  be  individual  and  an  artist,  the  other  will  remain 
consummately  skilful  and  uninteresting;  the  one  having 
begun  where  the  other  leaves  off.  Now  Busoni  can 
do,  on  the  pianoforte,  whatever  he  can  conceive ;  the 
question  is,  what  can  he  conceive  ?  As  he  sat  at  the 
piano  playing  Chopin,  I  thought  of  Busoni,  of  the  Bech- 
stein  piano,  of  what  fingers  can  do,  of  many  other 
extraneous  things,  never  of  Chopin.  I  saw  the  pianist 
with  the  Christ-like  head,  the  carefully  negligent  elegance 
of  his  appearance,  and  I  heard  wonderful  sounds  coming 
out  of  the  Bechstein  piano ;  but,  try  as  hard  as  I  liked, 
I  could  not  feel  the  contact  of  soul  and  instrument,  I 
could  not  feel  that  a  human  being  was  expressing  himself 
in  sound.  A  task  was  magnificently  accomplished,  but  a 
new  beauty  had  not  come  into  the  world.  Then  the 
Kreutzer  Sonata  began,  and  I  looked  at  Ysaye,  as  he  stood, 
an  almost  shapeless  mass  of  flesh,  holding  the  violin 
between  his  fat  fingers,  and  looking  vaguely  into  the  air. 
He  put  the  violin  to  his  shoulder.  The  face  had  been 
like  a  mass  of  clay,  waiting  the  sculptor's  thumb.  As 
the  music  came,  an  invisible  touch  seemed  to  pass  over 
it ;  the  heavy  mouth  and  chin  remained  firm,  pressed 
down  on  the  violin  ;  but  the  eyelids  and  the  eyebrows 
began  to  move,  as  if  the  eyes  saw  the  sound,  and  were 
drawing  it  in  luxuriously,  with  a  kind  of  sleepy  ecstasy, 
as  one  draws  in  perfume  out  of  a  flower.  Then,  in  that 
6 


Technique  and  the  Artist. 

instant,  a  beauty  which  had  never  been  in  the  world 
came  into  the  world ;  a  new  thing  was  created,  lived, 
died,  having  revealed  itself  to  all  those  who  were  capable 
of  receiving  it.  That  thing  was  neither  Beethoven  nor 
Ysaye,  it  was  made  out  of  their  meeting ;  it  was  music, 
not  abstract,  but  embodied  in  sound  ;  and  just  that  miracle 
could  never  occur  again,  though  others  like  it  might 
be  repeated  for  ever.  When  the  sound  stopped,  the 
face  returned  to  its  blind  and  deaf  waiting ;  the  interval, 
like  all  the  rest  of  life  probably,  not  counting  in  the 
existence  of  that  particular  soul,  which  came  and  went  with 
the  music. 

And  Ysaye  seems  to  me  the  type  of  the  artist,  not 
because  he  is  faultless  in  technique,  but  because  he  begins 
to  create  his  art  at  the  point  where  faultless  technique  leaves 
off.  With  him,  every  faculty  is  in  harmony ;  he  has  not 
even  too  much  of  any  good  thing.  There  are  times  when 
Busoni  astonishes  one ;  Ysaye  never  astonishes  one,  it  seems 
natural  that  he  should  do  everything  that  he  does,  just  as  he 
does  it.  Art,  as  Aristotle  has  said  finally,  should  always 
have  "a  continual  slight  novelty";  it  should  never 
astonish,  for  we  are  astonished  only  by  some  excess  or 
default,  never  by  a  thing  being  what  it  ought  to  be.  It  is  a 
fashion  of  the  moment  to  prize  extravagance  and  to  be 
timid  of  perfection.  That  is  why  we  give  the  name  of 
artist  to  those  who  can  startle  us  most.  We  have  come  to 
value  technique  for  the  violence  which  it  gives  into  the 
hands  of  those  who  possess  it,  in  their  assault  upon  our 
nerves.  We  have  come  to  look  upon  technique  as  an  end  in 
itself,  rather  than  as  a  means  to  an  end.  We  have  but 


Technique  and  the  Artist. 

one  word  of  praise,  and  we  use  that  one  word  lavishly. 
An  Ysaye  and  a  Busoni  are  the  same  to  us,  and  it  is  to 
our  credit  if  we  are  even  aware  that  Ysaye  is  the  equal  of 
Busoni. 


Nietzsche  on  Tragedy. 

I  HAVE  been  reading  Nietzsche  on  the  Origin  of  Tragedy,  in 
the  admirable  French  translation  published  under  the  care  of 
M.  Henri  Albert  by  the  "  Mercure  de  France  "  :  "  L'Origine 
de  la  Tragedie,  ou,  Hell£nisme  et  Pessimisme."  The  book 
was  written  at  the  age  of  twenty-eight,  and  we  have 
Nietzsche's  "criticism  of  himself"  by  way  of  preface, 
sixteen  years  later,  and  an  autobiographical  fragment, 
written  two  years  later  still,  which  M.  Albert  has  extracted 
from  one  of  the  posthumous  volumes.  I  have  been  reading 
all  that  with  the  delight  of  one  who  discovers  a  new  world, 
which  he  has  seen  already  in  a  dream.  I  never  take  up 
Nietzsche  without  the  surprise  of  finding  something  familiar. 
Sometimes  it  is  the  answer  to  a  question  which  I  have 
only  asked  ;  sometimes  it  seems  to  me  that  I  have  guessed 
at  the  answer.  And,  in  his  restless  energy,  his  hallucinatory 
vision,  the  agility  of  this  climbing  mind  of  the  mountains,  I 
find  that  invigoration  which  only  a  "tragic  philosopher'* 
can  .give.  "A  sort  of  mystic  soul,"  as  he  says  of  himself, 
"  almost  the  soul  of  a  Maenad,  who,  troubled,  capricious, 
and  half  irresolute  whether  to  cede  or  fly,  stammers  out 
something  in  a  foreign  tongue." 

The  book  is  a  study  in  the  origin  of  tragedy  among  the 
Greeks,  as  it  arose  out  of  music  through  the  medium  of  the 
chorus.  We  are  apt  to  look  on  the  chorus  in  Greek  plays 
as  almost  a  negligible  part  of  the  structure ;  as,  in  fact, 
hardly  more  than  the  comments  of  that  "  ideal  spectator  " 
whom  Schlegel  called  up  out  of  the  depths  of  the  German 
consciousness.  We  know,  however,  that  the  chorus  was  the 


Nietzsche  on  Tragedy. 

original  nucleus  of  the  play,  that  the  action  on  which  it 
seems  only  to  comment  is  no  more  than  a  development  of 
the  chorus.  Here  is  the  problem  to  which  Nietzsche 
endeavours  to  find  an  answer.  He  finds  it,  unlike  the 
learned  persons  who  study  Greek  texts,  among  the  roots  of 
things,  in  the  very  making  of  the  universe.  Art  arises,  he 
tells  us,  from  the  conflict  of  the  two  creative  spirits, 
symbolised  by  the  Greeks  in  the  two  gods,  Apollo  and 
Dionysus ;  and  he  names  the  one  the  Apollonian  spirit, 
which  we  see  in  plastic  art,  and  the  other  the  Dionysiac 
spirit,  which  we  see  in  music.  Apollo  is  the  god  of  dreams, 
Dionysus  the  god  of  intoxication  ;  the  one  represents  for  us 
the  world  of  appearances,  the  other  is,  as  it  were,  the  voice 
of  things  in  themselves.  The  chorus,  then,  which  arose  out 
of  the  hymns  to  Dionysus,  is  the  "lyric  cry,"  the  vital 
ecstasy  ;  the  drama  is  the  projection  into  vision,  into  a 
picture,  of  the  exterior,  temporary  world  of  forms.  "  We 
now  see  that  the  stage  and  the  action  are  conceived  only  as 
vision  :  that  the  sole  '  reality '  is  precisely  the  chorus,  which 
itself  produces  the  vision,  and  expresses  it  by  the  aid  of  the 
whole  symbolism  of  dance,  sound,  and  word."  In  the 
admirable  phrase  of  Schiller,  the  chorus  is  "  a  living  ram- 
part against  reality,"  against  that  false  reality  of  daily  life 
which  is  a  mere  drapery  of  civilisation,  and  has  nothing  to 
do  with  the  primitive  reality  of  nature.  The  realistic  drama 
begins  with  Euripides ;  and  Euripides,  the  casuist,  the 
friend  of  Socrates  (whom  Nietzsche  qualifies  as  the  true 
decadent,  an  "  instrument  of  decomposition,"  the  slayer  of 
art,  the  father  of  modern  science),  brings  tragedy  to  an  end, 
as  he  substitutes  pathos  for  action,  thought  for  contempla- 

10 


Nietzsche  on  Tragedy. 

tion,  and  passionate  sentiments  for  the  primitive  ecstasy. 
"  Armed  with  the  scourge  of  its  syllogisms,  an  optimist 
dialectic  drives  the  music  out  of  tragedy  :  that  is  to  say, 
destroys  the  very  essence  of  tragedy,  an  essence  which  can  be 
interpreted  only  as  a  manifestation  and  objectivation  of 
Dionysiac  states,  as  a  visible  symbol  of  music,  as  the  dream- 
world of  a  Dionysiac  intoxication." 

There  are  many  pages,  scattered  throughout  his  work,  in 
which  Pater  has  dealt  with  some  of  the  Greek  problems  very 
much  in  the  spirit  of  Nietzsche ;  with  that  problem,  for 
instance,  of  the  "  blitheness  and  serenity "  of  the  Greek 
spirt,  and  of  the  gulf  of  horror  over  which  it  seems  to  rest, 
suspended  as  on  the  wings  of  the  condor.  That  myth  of 
Dionysus  Zagreus,  "  a  Bacchus  who  had  been  in  hell,'* 
which  is  the  foundation  of  the  marvellous  new  myth  of 
"  Denys  1'Auxerrois,"  seems  always  to  be  in  the  mind  of 
Nietzsche,  though  indeed  he  refers  to  it  but  once,  and 
passingly.  Pater  has  shown,  as  Nietzsche  shows  in  greater 
detail  and  with  a  more  rigorous  logic,  that  this  "  serenity  " 
was  but  an  accepted  illusion,  and  all  Olympus  itself  but 
"  intermediary,"  an  escape,  through  the  aesthetics  of  religion, 
from  the  trouble  at  the  heart  of  things ;  art,  with  its  tragic 
illusions  of  life,  being  another  form  of  escape.  To 
Nietzsche  the  world  and  existence  justify  themselves  only  as 
an  aesthetic  phenomenon,  the  work  of  a  god  wholly  the 
artist;  "and  in  this  sense  the  object  of  the  tragic  myth  is 
precisely  to  convince  us  that  even  the  horrible  and  the 
monstrous  are  no  more  than  an  aesthetic  game,  played  with 
itself  by  the  Will  in  the  eternal  plenitude  of  its  joy." 
"  The  Will  "  is  Schopenhauer's  "  Will,"  the  vital  principle. 
n 


Nietzsche  on  Tragedy. 

"  If  it  were  possible,"  says  Nietzsche,  in  one  of  his  astonish- 
ing figures  of  speech,  "  to  imagine  a  dissonance  becoming  a 
human  being  (and  what  is  man  but  that  ?),  in  order  to 
endure  life,  this  dissonance  would  need  some  admirable 
illusion  to  hide  from  itself  its  true  nature,  under  a  veil  of 
beauty. "  This  is  the  aim  of  art,  as  it  calls  up  pictures  of 
the  visible  world  and  of  the  little,  temporary  actions  of  men 
on  its  surface.  The  hoofed  satyr  of  Dionysus,  as  he  leaps 
into  the  midst  of  these  gracious  appearances,  drunk  with 
the  young  wine  of  nature,  surly  with  the  old  wisdom  of 
Silenus,  brings  the  real,  excessive,  disturbing  truth  of  things 
suddenly  into  the  illusion ;  and  is  gone  again,  with  a  shrill 
laugh,  without  forcing  on  us  more  of  his  presence  than 
we  can  bear. 

I  have  but  touched  on  a  few  points  in  an  argument  which 
has  itself  the  ecstatic  quality  of  which  it  speaks.  A  good 
deal  of  the  book  is  concerned  with  the  latest  development  of 
music,  and  especially  with  Wagner.  Nietzsche,  after  his 
change  of  sides,  tells  us  not  to  take  this  part  too  seriously  : 
"  what  I  fancied  I  heard  in  the  Wagnerian  music  has  nothing 
to  do  with  Wagner."  Few  better  things  have  been  said 
about  music  than  these  pages;  some  of  them  might  be 
quoted  against  the  "  programme "  music  which  has  been 
written  since  that  time,  and  against  the  false  theory  on  which 
musicians  have  attempted  to  harness  music  in  the  shafts  of 
literature.  The  whole  book  is  awakening  ;  in  Nietzsche's 
own  words,  "  a  prodigious  hope  speaks  in  it." 


12 


A  Reflection  at  a  Dolmetsch  Concert. 

THE  interpreter  of  ancient  music,  Arnold  Dolmetsch,  is  one 
of  those  rare  magicians  who  are  able  to  make  roses  blossom 
in  mid-winter.  While  music  has  been  modernising  itself 
until  the  piano  becomes  an  orchestra,  and  Berlioz  requires 
four  orchestras  to  obtain  a  pianissimo,  this  strange  man  of 
genius  has  quietly  gone  back  a  few  centuries  and  discovered 
for  himself  an  exquisite  lost  world,  which  was  disappearing 
like  a  fresco  peeling  off  a  wall.  He  has  burrowed  in 
libraries  and  found  unknown  manuscripts  like  a  savant, 
he  has  worked  at  misunderstood  notations  and  found  out  a 
way  of  reading  them  like  a  cryptogrammatist,  he  has  first 
found  out  how  to  restore  and  then  how  to  make  over  again 
harpsichord,  and  virginals,  and  clavichord,  and  all  those 
instruments  which  had  become  silent  curiosities  in 
museums. 

It  is  only  beginning  to  be  realised,  even  by  musical 
people,  that  the  clavecin  music  of,  for  instance,  Bach,  loses 
at  least  half  its  charm,  almost  its  identity,  when  played  on 
the  modern  grand  piano ;  that  the  exquisite  music  of 
Rameau  and  Couperin,  the  brilliant  and  beautiful  music  of 
Scarlatti,  is  almost  inaudible  on  everything  but  the  harpsi- 
chord and  the  viols  ;  and  that  there  exists,  far  earlier  than 
these  writers,  a  mass  of  English  and  Italian  music  of  extreme 
beauty,  which  has  never  been  spoiled  on  the  piano  because  it 
has  never  been  played  on  it.  To  any  one  who  has  once 
touched  a  spinet,  harpsichord,  or  clavichord,  the  piano  must 
always  remain  a  somewhat  inadequate  instrument ;  lacking 
in  the  precision,  the  penetrating  charm,  the  infinite  definite 

13 


A  Reflection  at  a  Dolmetsch  Concert. 

reasons  for  existence  of  those  instruments  of  wires  and  jacks 
and  quills  which  its  metallic  rumble  has  been  supposed  so 
entirely  to  have  superseded.  As  for  the  clavichord,  to  have 
once  touched  it,  feeling  the  softness  with  which  one's 
fingers  make  their  own  music,  like  wind  among  the  reeds,  is 
to  have  lost  something  of  one's  relish  even  for  the  music  of 
the  violin,  which  is  also  a  windy  music,  but  the  music  of 
wind  blowing  sharply  among  the  trees.  It  is  on  such 
instruments  that  Mr.  Dolmetsch  plays  to  us ;  and  he  plays 
to  us  also  on  the  lute,  the  theorbo,  the  viola  da  gamba, 
the  viola  d'  amore,  and  I  know  not  how  many  varieties 
of  those  stringed  instruments  which  are  most  familiar  to 
most  of  us  from  the  early  Italian  pictures  in  which 
whimsical  little  angels  with  crossed  legs  hold  them  to 
their  chins. 

Mr.  Dolmetsch  is,  I  suppose,  the  only  living  man  who 
can  read  lute-music  and  play  on  the  lute,  an  instrument  of 
extraordinary  beauty,  which  was  once  as  common  in  England 
as  the  guitar  still  is  in  Spain.  And,  having  made  with  his 
own  hands  the  materials  of  the  music  which  he  has  recovered 
from  oblivion,  he  has  taught  himself  and  he  has  taught 
others  to  play  this  music  on  these  instruments  and  to  sing 
it  to  their  accompaniment.  In  a  music  room,  which  is 
really  the  living  room  of  a  house,  with  viols  hanging  on  the 
walls,  a  chamber-organ  in  one  corner,  a  harpsichord  in 
another,  a  clavichord  laid  across  the  arms  of  a  chair,  this 
music  seems  to  carry  one  out  of  the  world,  and  shut  one 
in  upon  a  house  of  dreams,  full  of  intimate  and  ghostly 
voices.  It  is  a  house  of  peace,  where  music  is  still  that 
refreshment  which  it  was  before  it  took  fever,  and  became 

14 


A  Reflection  at  a  Dolmetsch  Concert. 

accomplice  and  not  minister  to  the  nerves,  and  brought  the 
clamour  of  the  world  into  its  seclusion. 

Go  from  a  concert  at  Dolmetsch's  to  a  Tschaikowsky 
concert  at  the  Queen's  Hall.  Tschaikowsky  is  a  debauch, 
not  so  much  passionate  as  feverish.  The  rushing  of  his 
violins,  like  the  rushing  of  an  army  of  large  winged  birds  ; 
the  thud,  snap,  and  tingle  of  his  strange  orchestra ;  the 
riotous  image  of  Russian  peasants  leaping  and  hopping  in 
their  country  dances,  which  his  dance  measures  call  up 
before  one  ;  those  sweet  solid  harmonies  in  which  (if  I  may 
quote  the  voluptuous  phrase  of  a  woman)  one  sets  one's 
teeth  as  into  nougat ;  all  this  is  like  a  very  material  kind  of 
pleasure,  in  which  the  senses  for  a  moment  forget  the  soul. 
For  a  moment  only,  for  is  it  not  the  soul,  a  kind  of 
discontented  crying  out  against  pleasure  and  pain,  which 
comes  back  distressingly  into  this  after  all  pathetic  music  ? 
All  modern  music  is  pathetic  ;  discontent  (so  much  idealism 
as  that !)  has  come  into  all  modern  music,  that  it  may  be 
sharpened  and  disturbed  enough  to  fix  our  attention.  And 
Tschaikowsky  speaks  straight  to  the  nerves,  with  that  touch 
of  unmanliness  which  is  another  characteristic  of  modern 
art.  There  is  a  vehement  and  mighty  sorrow  in  the  Passion 
Music  of  Bach,  by  the  side  of  which  the  grief  of 
Tschaikowsky  is  like  the  whimpering  of  a  child.  He  is 
unconscious  of  reticence,  unconscious  of  self-control.  He 
is  unhappy,  and  he  weeps  floods  of  tears,  beats  his  breast, 
curses  the  daylight ;  he  sees  only  the  misery  of  the  moment, 
and  he  sees  the  misery  of  the  moment  as  a  thing  endless 
and  overwhelming.  The  child  who  has  broken  his  toy  can 
realise  nothing  in  the  future  but  a  passionate  regret  for  the  toy. 

15 


A  Reflection  at  a  Dolmetsch  Concert. 

In  Tschaikowsky  there  is  none  of  the  quieting  of  thought. 
The  only  healing  for  our  nerves  lies  in  abstract  thought,  and 
he  can  never  get  far  enough  from  his  nerves  to  look  calmly 
at  his  own  discontent.  All  those  wild,  broken  rhythms, 
rushing  this  way  and  that,  are  letting  out  his  secret  all  the 
time  :  "  I  am  unhappy,  and  I  know  not  why  I  am  unhappy ; 
I  want,  but  I  know  not  what  I  want."  In  the  most 
passionate  and  the  most  questioning  music  of  Wagner  there 
is  always  air  ;  Tschaikowsky  is  suffocating.  It  is  himself 
that  he  pities  so  much,  and  not  himself  because  he  shares  in 
the  general  sorrow  of  the  world.  To  Tristan  and  Isolde 
the  whole  universe  is  an  exultant  and  martyred  sharer  in 
their  love  ;  they  know  only  the  absolute.  Even  suffering 
does  not  bring  nobility  to  Tschaikowsky. 

I  speak  of  Wagner  because  it  seems  to  me  that  Wagner, 
alone  among  quite  modern  musicians,  and  though  indeed 
he  appeals  to  our  nerves  more  forcibly  than  any  of  them, 
has  that  breadth  and  universality  by  which  emotion  ceases  to 
be  merely  personal  and  becomes  elemental.  To  the 
musicians  of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries,  music 
was  an  art  which  had  to  be  carefully  guarded  from  the  too 
disturbing  presence  of  emotion  ;  emotion  is  there  always, 
whenever  the  music  is  fine  music ;  but  the  music  is  some- 
thing much  more  than  a  means  for  the  expression  of 
emotion.  It  is  a  pattern,  its  beauty  lies  in  its  obedience  to 
a  law,  it  is  music  made  for  music's  sake,  with  what  might 
be  called  a  more  exclusive  devotion  to  art  than  that  of  our 
modern  musicians.  This  music  aims  at  the  creation  of  beauty 
in  sound  ;  it  conceives  of  beautiful  sound  as  a  thing  which 
cannot  exist  outside  order  and  measure  ;  it  has  not  yet  come 
16 


A  Reflection  at  a  Dolmetsch  Concert. 

to  look  upon  transgression  as  an  essential  part  of  liberty. 
It  does  not  even  desire  liberty,  but  is  content  with  loving 
obedience.  It  can  express  emotion,  but  it  will  never 
express  an  emotion  carried  to  that  excess  at  which  the 
modern  idea  of  emotion  begins.  Thus,  for  all  its  sugges- 
tions of  pain,  grief,  melancholy,  it  will  remain,  for  us  at 
least,  happy  music,  voices  of  a  house  of  peace.  Is  there, 
in  the  future  of  music,  after  it  has  expressed  for  us  all  our 
emotions,  and  we  are  tired  of  our  emotions,  and  weary 
enough  to  be  content  with  a  little  rest,  any  likelihood  of 
a  return  to  this  happy  music,  into  which  beauty  shall 
come  without  the  selfishness  of  desire  ? 


The  Dramatisation  of  Song. 

ALL  art  is  a  compromise,  in  which  the  choice  of  what  is  to 
be  foregone  must  be  left  somewhat  to  the  discretion  of 
nature.  When  the  sculptor  foregoes  colour,  when  the 
painter  foregoes  relief,  when  the  poet  foregoes  the  music 
which  soars  beyond  words  and  the  musician  that  precise 
meaning  which  lies  in  words  alone,  he  follows  a  kind  of 
necessity  in  things,  and  the  compromise  seems  to  be  ready- 
made  for  him.  But  there  will  always  be  those  who  are 
discontented  with  no  matter  what  fixed  limits,  who  dream, 
like  Wagner,  of  a  possible,  or,  like  Mallarme,  of  an  impos- 
sible, fusion  of  the  arts.  These  would  invent  for  them- 
selves a  compromise  which  has  not  yet  come  into  the  world, 
a  gain  without  loss,  a  re-adjustment  in  which  the  scales  shall 
bear  so  much  additional  weight  without  trembling.  But 
nature  is  not  always  obedient  to  this  too  autocratic  com- 
mand. 

Take  the  art  of  the  voice.  In  its  essence,  the  art  of  the 
voice  is  the  same  in  the  nightingale  and  in  Melba.  The 
same  note  is  produced  in  the  same  way ;  the  expression 
given  to  that  note,  the  syllable  which  that  note  renders,  are 
quite  different  things.  Song  does  not  in  itself  require  words 
in  order  to  realise  even  the  utmost  of  its  capacities.  The 
voice  is  an  instrument  like  the  violin,  and  no  more  in  need 
of  words  for  its  expression  than  the  violin.  Perhaps  the 
ideal  of  singing  would  be  attained  when  a  marvellous  voice, 
which  had  absorbed  into  itself  all  that  temperament  and 
training  had  to  give  it,  sang  inarticulate  music,  like  a  violin 
which  could  play  itself.  There  is  nothing  which  such  an 
18 


The  Dramatisation  of  Song. 

instrument  could  not  express,  nothing  which  exists  as  pure 
music;  and,  in  this  way,  we  should  have  the  art  of  the  voice, 
with  the  least  possible  compromise. 

The  compromise  is  already  far  on  its  way  when  words 
begin  to  come  into  the  song.  Here  are  two  arts  helping 
one  another;  something  is  gained,  but  how  much  is  lost? 
Undoubtedly  the  words  lose,  and  does  not  the  voice  lose 
something  also,  in  its  directness  of  appeal  ?  Add  acting  to 
voice  and  words,  and  you  get  the  ultimate  compromise, 
opera,  in  which  other  arts  as  well  have  their  share,  and  in 
which  Wagner  would  have  us  see  the  supreme  form  of  art. 
Again  something  is  lost;  we  lose  more  and  more,  perhaps 
for  a  greater  gain.  Tristan  sings  lying  on  his  back,  ,in 
order  to  represent  a  sick  man;  the  actual  notes  which  he 
sings  are  written  partly  in  order  to  indicate  the  voice  of  a 
sick  man.  For  the  sake  of  what  we  gain  in  dramatic  and 
even  theatrical  expressiveness,  we  have  lost  a  two-fold 
means  of  producing  vocal  beauty.  Let  us  rejoice  in  the 
gain,  by  all  means ;  but  not  without  some  consciousness  of 
the  loss,  not  with  too  ready  a  belief  that  the  final  solution 
of  the  problem  has  been  found. 

I  have  just  been  seeing  and  hearing  in  Paris  a  very 
curious  experiment  in  the  combination  of  the  arts,  about 
which  I  am  the  more  anxious  to  say  a  few  words  as  it  is  quite 
likely  that  we  may,  one  of  these  days,  have  an  opportunity 
of  seeing  and  hearing  it  in  London.  Madame  Georgette 
Leblanc,  a  singer  who  is  known  for  her  creations  of 
Carmen  and  of  Charlotte  Corday,  at  the  Opera-Comique, 
has  developed  a  method  of  her  own  for  singing  and  acting 
at  the  same  time,  not  as  a  character  in  an  opera,  but  in  the 

'9 


The  Dramatisation  of  Song. 

interpretation  of  separate  songs,  the  songs  of  Schumann  and 
Schubert,  for  instance,  and  of  songs  written  for  the  words  of 
Verlaine,  Maeterlinck,  and  others,  by  Gabriel  Faure,  Gabriel 
Fabre,  and  other  musicians.  If  she  comes  to  London  she 
will  take  one  of  the  smaller  halls,  where  the  effect  at  which 
she  aims  could  be  best  realised  ;  when  I  heard  her  in  Paris,  it 
was  in  a  private  house,  with  the  accompaniment  on  the 
piano  of  M.  Fabre,  the  composer  of  a  good  many  of  the 
songs. 

Imagine  a  woman  who  suggests  at  the  same  time  Sarah 
Bernhardt  and  Mrs.  Brown-Potter,  without  being  really  like 
either  ;  she  is  small,  exuberantly  blonde,  her  head  is  sur- 
rounded by  masses  of  loosely  twisted  blonde  hair ;  she  has 
large  grey  eyes,  that  can  be  grave,  or  mocking,  or  passionate, 
or  cruel,  or  watchful ;  a  large  nose,  an  intent,  eloquent 
mouth.  She  wears  a  trailing  dress  that  follows  the  lines  of 
the  figure  vaguely,  supple  to  every  movement.  When  she 
sings,  she  has  an  old,  high-backed  chair  in  which  she  can  sit, 
or  on  which  she  can  lean.  When  I  heard  her,  there  was  a 
mirror  on  the  other  side  of  the  room,  opposite  to  her  ;  she 
saw  no  one  else  in  the  room,  once  she  had  surrendered  her- 
self to  the  possession  of  the  song,  but  she  was  always  con- 
scious of  that  image  of  herself  which  came  back  to  her  out 
of  the  mirror  :  it  was  herself  watching  herself,  in  a  kind  of 
delight  at  the  beauty  which  she  was  evoking  out  of  words, 
notes,  and  expressive  movement. 

Her  voice  is  strong  and  rich,  imperfectly  trained,  but  the 
voice  of  a  born  singer  ;  her  acting  is  even  more  the  acting  of 
a  born  actress;  but  it  is  the  temperament  of  the  woman  that 
flames  into  her  voice  and  gestures,  and  sets  her  whole  being 
20 


The  Dramatisation  of  Song. 

violently  and  delicately  before  you.  She  makes  a  drama  of 
each  song,  and  she  re-creates  that  drama  over  again,  in  her 
rendering  of  the  intentions  of  the  words  and  of  the  music. 
It  is  as  much  with  her  eyes  and  her  hands,  as  with  her  voice, 
that  she  evokes  the  melody  of  a  picture  ;  it  is  a  picture  that 
sings,  and  that  sings  in  all  its  lines.  There  is  something  in 
her  aspect,  what  shall  I  call  it  ?  tenacious ;  it  is  a  woman 
who  is  an  artist  because  she  is  a  woman,  who  takes  in 
energy  at  all  her  senses  and  give  out  energy  at  all  her 
senses.  She  sang  some  tragic  songs  of  Schumann,  some 
mysterious  songs  of  Maeterlinck,  some  delicate  love -songs 
of  Charles  van  Lerberghe.  As  one  looked  and  listened 
it  was  impossible  to  think  more  of  the  words  than  of  the 
music  or  of  the  music  than  of  the  words.  One  took  them 
simultaneously,  as  one  feels  at  once  the  softness  and  the 
perfume  of  a  flower.  I  understood  why  Mallarme  had 
seemed  to  see  in  her  the  realisation  of  one  of  his  dreams. 
Here  was  a  new  art,  made  up  of  a  new  mixing  of  the  arts, 
in  one  subtly  intoxicating  elixir.  To  Mallarm£  it  was  the 
more  exquisite  because  there  was  in  it  none  of  the  broad 
general  appeal  of  opera,  of  the  gross  recognised  proportions 
of  things. 

This  dramatisation  of  song,  done  by  any  one  less  subtly, 
less  completely,  and  less  sincerely  an  artist,  would  lead  us,  I 
am  afraid,  into  something  more  disastrous  than  even  the 
official  concert,  with  its  rigid  persons  in  evening  dress  hold- 
ing sheets  of  music  in  their  tremulous  hands,  and  singing 
the  notes  set  down  for  them  to  the  best  of  their  vocal  ability. 
Madame  Georgette  Leblanc  is  an  exceptional  artist,  and  she 
has  made  an  art  after  her  own  likeness,  which  exists  because 

21 


The  Dramatisation  of  Song. 

it  is  the  expression  of  herself,  of  a  strong  nature  always  in 
vibration.  What  she  feels  as  a  woman  she  can  render  as  an 
artist ;  she  is  at  once  instinctive  and  deliberate,  deliberate 
because  it  is  her  natural  instinct,  the  natural  instinct  of  a 
woman  who  is  essentially  a  woman,  to  be  so.  I  imagine  her 
always  singing  in  front  of  a  mirror,  always  recognising  her 
own  shadow  there,  and  the  more  absolutely  abandoned  to 
what  the  song  is  saying  through  her  because  of  that  uninter- 
rupted communion  with  herself. 


22 


The  Speaking  of  Verse 

A  VERY  interesting  lecture  was  given  on  Thursday,  May  22, 
at  the  Coronet  Theatre,  by  M.  Silvain,  of  the  Comedie 
Franchise,  on  the  art  of  speaking,  or,  as  it  might  more 
correctly  have  been  called,  on  the  art  of  speaking  verse.  I 
had  just  been  to  a  small  private  gathering  in  the  committee- 
room  of  Clifford's  Inn,  to  hear  some  verse  spoken  to  the 
psaltery  by  Miss  Florence  Farr.  Mr.  Yeats  has  written,  in 
the  May  number  of  the  Monthly  Ifjview,  on  this  attempt, 
made  by  him  with  the  assistance  of  Mr.  Dolmetsch,  at  the 
revival  of  an  old  art :  the  art  of  speaking  verse  to  a  pitch 
sounded  by  a  musical  instrument.  He  has  also  lectured  on 
the  subject  in  public,  and  talked  much  about  it  in  private, 
and  has  found  disciples,  and  had  psalteries  made  for  him  by 
Mr.  Dolmetsch,  and  found  persons  with  voices  to  chant 
verse  to  the  accompaniment  of  the  psaltery.  I  have  heard 
some  of  these  performances,  but  in  these  pages  I  must  limit 
myself  to  what  I  heard  at  the  rehearsal  in  Clifford's  Inn,  and  to 
Mr.  Yeats'  contentions  in  his  article  in  the  Monthly  Review. 
The  method  of  M.  Silvain  (who,  besides  being  an  actor, 
is  Professor  of  Declamation  at  the  Conservatoire)  is  the 
method  of  the  elocutionist,  but  of  the  elocutionist  at  his 
best.  He  has  a  large,  round,  vibrating  voice,  over  which 
he  has  perfect  command.  "  M.  Silvain,"  says  M.  Catulle 
Mendes,  "  est  de  ceux,  bien  rares  au  Theatre  Fran^ais,  qu'on 
entend  me'me  lorsqu'ils  parlent  bas."  He  has  trained  his 
voice  to  do  everything  that  he  wants  it  to  do ;  his  whole 
body  is  full  of  life,  energy,  sensitiveness  to  the  emotion  of 
every  word ;  his  gestures  seem  to  be  at  once  spontaneous 

23 


The  Speaking  of  Verse. 

and  calculated.  He  adores  verse,  for  its  own  sake,  as  a 
brilliant  executant  adores  his  violin  ;  he  has  an  excellent  con- 
tempt for  prose,  as  an  inferior  form.  In  all  his  renderings 
of  verse,  he  never  forgot  that  it  was  at  the  same  time  speech, 
the  direct  expression  of  character,  and  also  poetry,  a  thing 
with  its  own  reasons  for  existence.  He  gave  La  Fontaine  in 
one  way,  Moliere  in  another,  Victor  Hugo  in  another,  some 
poor  modern  verse  in  yet  another.  But  in  all  there  was  the 
same  attempt :  to  treat  verse  in  the  spirit  of  rhetoric,  that  is 
to  say,  to  over-emphasise  it  consistently  and  for  effect.  In 
a  tirade  from  Corneille's  "  Cinna,"  he  followed  the  angry 
reasoning  of  the  lines  by  counting  on  his  fingers :  one,  two, 
three,  as  if  he  were  underlining  the  important  words  of  each 
clause.  The  danger  of  this  method  is  that  it  is  apt  to 
turn  poetry  into  a  kind  of  bad  logic.  There,  precisely, 
is  the  danger  of  the  French  conception  of  poetry,  and 
M.  Silvain's  method  brings  out  the  worst  faults  of  that 
conception. 

Now  in  speaking  verse  to  musical  notes,  as  Mr.  Yeats 
would  have  us  do,  we  are  at  least  safe  from  this  danger. 
Mr.  Yeats,  being  a  poet,  knows  that  verse  is  first  of  all 
song.  In  purely  lyrical  verse,  with  which  he  is  at  present 
chiefly  concerned,  the  verse  itself  has  a  melody  which 
demands  expression  by  the  voice,  not  only  when  it  is  "set 
to  music,"  but  when  it  is  said  aloud.  Every  poet,  when 
he  reads  his  own  verse,  reads  it  with  certain  inflections  of 
the  voice,  in  what  is  often  called  a  "  sing-song "  way, 
quite  different  from  the  way  in  which  he  would  read  prose. 
Most  poets  aim  rather  at  giving  the  musical  effect,  and  the 
atmosphere,  the  vocal  atmosphere,  of  the  poem,  than  at 

24 


The  Speaking  of  Verse. 

emphasising  individual  meanings.  They  give,  in  the 
musician's  sense,  a  "  reading  "  of  the  poem,  an  interpretation 
of  the  poem  as  a  composition.  Mr.  Yeats  thinks  that  this 
kind  of  reading  can  be  stereotyped,  so  to  speak,  the  pitch 
noted  down  in  musical  notes,  and  reproduced  with  the  help 
of  a  simple  stringed  instrument.  By  way  of  proof,  Miss  Farr 
repeated  one  of  Mr.  Yeats'  lyrics,  as  nearly  as  possible  in 
the  way  in  which  Mr.  Yeats  himself  is  accustomed  to  say  it. 
She  took  the  pitch  from  certain  notes  which  she  had  written 
down,  and  which  she  struck  on  Mr.  Dolmetsch's  psaltery. 
Now  Miss  Farr  has  a  beautiful  voice,  and  a  genuine  feeling 
for  the  beauty  of  verse.  She  said  the  lines  better  than  most 
people  would  have  said  them,  but,  to  be  quite  frank,  did 
she  say  them  so  as  to  produce  the  effect  Mr.  Yeats  himself 
produces  whenever  he  repeats  those  lines  ?  The  difference 
was  fundamental.  The  one  was  a  spontaneous  thing,  pro- 
foundly felt ;  the  other,  a  deliberate  imitation,  in  which  the 
fixing  of  the  notes  made  any  personal  interpretation,  good 
or  bad,  impossible. 

I  admit  that  the  way  in  which  most  actors  speak  verse  is 
so  deplorable  that  there  is  much  to  be  said  for  a  purely 
mechanical  method,  even  if  it  should  turn  actors  into  little 
more  than  human  phonographs.  Many  actors  treat  verse 
as  a  slightly  more  stilted  kind  of  prose,  and  their  main  aim 
in  saying  it  is  to  conceal  from  the  audience  the  fact  that  it 
is  not  prose.  They  think  of  nothing  but  what  they  take  to 
be  the  expression,  and  when  they  come  to  a  passage  of 
purely  lyric  quality  they  give  it  as  if  it  were  a  quotation, 
having  nothing  to  do  with  the  rest  of  the  speech.  Anything 
is  better  than  this  haphazard  way  of  misdoing  things,  either 

25 


The  Speaking  of  Verse. 

M.  Silvain's  oratory  or  the  intoning  into  which  Mr.  Yeats' 
method  would  almost  certainly  drift.  But  I  cannot  feel 
that  it  is  possible  to  do  much  good  by  a  ready-made  method 
of  any  kind.  Let  the  actor  be  taught  how  to  breathe,  how 
to  articulate,  let  his  voice  be  trained  to  express  what  he 
wants  to  express,  and  then  let  him  be  made  to  feel  some- 
thing of  what  verse  means  by  being  verse.  Let  him,  by  all 
means,  study  one  of  Mr.  Yeats'  readings,  interpreted  to  him 
by  means  of  the  notes ;  it  will  teach  him  to  unlearn  some- 
thing and  to  learn  something  more.  But  then  let  him 
forget  his  notes  and  Mr.  Yeats'  method,  if  he  is  to  make 
verse  live  on  the  stage. 


26 


Sarah  Bernhardt. 

I  AM  not  sure  that  the  best  moment  to  study  an  artist  is  not 
the  moment  of  what  is  called  decadence.  The  first  energy 
of  inspiration  is  gone ;  what  remains  is  the  method,  the 
mechanism,  and  it  is  that  which  alone  one  can  study,  as  one 
can  study  the  mechanism  of  the  body,  not  the  principle  of 
life  itself.  What  is  done  mechanically,  after  the  heat  of 
the  blood  has  cooled,  and  the  divine  accidents  have  ceased 
to  happen,  is  precisely  all  that  was  consciously  skilful  in  the 
performance  of  an  art.  To  see  all  this  mechanism  left 
bare,  as  the  form  of  the  skeleton  is  left  bare  when  age  thins 
the  flesh  upon  it,  is  to  learn  more  easily  all  that  is  to  be 
learnt  of  structure,  the  art  which  not  art  but  nature  has 
hitherto  concealed  with  its  merciful  covering. 

The  art  of  Sarah  Bernhardt  has  always  been  a  very 
conscious  art,  but  it  spoke  to  us,  once,  with  so  electrical  a 
shock,  as  if  nerve  touched  nerve,  or  the  mere  "  contour 
subtil  "  of  the  voice  were  laid  tinglingly  on  one's  spinal 
cord,  that  it  was  difficult  to  analyse  it  coldly.  She  was 
Phedre  or  Marguerite  Gautier,  she  was  Adrienne  Lecouvreur, 
Fedora,  La  Tosca,  the  actual  woman,  and  she  was  also  that 
other  actual  woman,  Sarah  Bernhardt.  Two  magics  met 
and  united,  in  the  artist  and  the  woman,  each  alone  of  its 
kind.  There  was  an  excitement  in  going  to  the  theatre ; 
one's  pulses  beat  feverishly  before  the  curtain  had  risen  ; 
there  was  almost  a  kind  of  obscure  sensation  of  peril,  such 
as  one  feels  when  the  lioness  leaps  into  the  cage,  on  the  other 
side  of  the  bars.  And  the  acting  was  like  a  passionate 
declaration,  offered  to  some  one  unknown  ;  it  was  as  if  the 

27 


Sarah  Bernhardt. 

whole  nervous  force  of  the  audience  were  sucked  out  of  it 
and  flung  back,  intensified,  upon  itself,  as  it  encountered 
the  single,  insatiable,  indomitable  nervous  force  of  the 
woman.  And  so,  in  its  way,  this  very  artificial  acting 
seemed  the  mere  instinctive,  irresistible  expression  of  a 
temperament ;  it  mesmerised  one,  awakening  the  senses  and 
sending  the  intelligence  to  sleep. 

After  all,  though  Rejane  skins  emotions  alive,  and 
Duse  serves  them  up  to  you  on  golden  dishes,  it  is  Sarah 
Bernhardt  who  prepares  the  supreme  feast.  In  "  La  Dame 
aux  Camelias,"  still,  she  shows  herself,  as  an  actress,  the 
greatest  actress  in  the  world.  It  is  all  sheer  acting  ;  there 
is  no  suggestion,  as  with  Duse,  there  is  no  canaille  attrac- 
tiveness, as  with  Rejane;  the  thing  is  plastic,  a  modelling 
of  emotion  before  you,  with  every  vein  visible  ;  she  leaves 
nothing  to  the  imagination,  gives  you  every  motion,  all  the 
physical  signs  of  death,  all  the  fierce  abandonment  to  every 
mood,  to  grief,  to  delight,  to  lassitude.  When  she  suffers, 
in  the  scene,  for  instance,  where  Armand  insults  her,  she  is 
like  a  trapped  wild  beast  which  some  one  is  torturing,  and 
she  wakes  just  that  harrowing  pity.  One's  whole  flesh 
suffers  with  her  flesh  ;  her  voice  caresses  and  excites  like  a 
touch  ;  it  has  a  throbbing,  monotonous  music,  which  breaks 
deliciously,  which  pauses  suspended,  and  then  resolves  itself 
in  a  perfect  chord.  Her  voice  is  like  a  thing  detachable 
from  herself,  a  thing  which  she  takes  in  her  hands  like  a 
musical  instrument,  playing  on  the  stops  cunningly  with  her 
fingers.  Prose,  when  she  speaks  it,  becomes  a  kind  of  verse, 
with  all  the  rhythms,  the  vocal  harmonies,  of  a  kind  of 
human  poetry.  Her  whisper  is  heard  across  the  whole 
28 


Sarah  Bernhardt. 

theatre,  every  syllable  distinct,  and  yet  it  is  really  a  whisper. 
She  comes  on  the  stage  like  a  miraculous  painted  idol,  all 
nerves  ;  she  runs  through  the  gamut  of  the  sex,  and  ends 
a  child,  when  the  approach  of  death  brings  Marguerite 
back  to  that  deep  infantile  part  of  woman.  She  plays  the 
part  now  with  the  accustomed  ease  of  one  who  puts  on  and 
off  an  old  shoe.  It  is  almost  a  part  of  her ;  she  knows  it 
through  all  her  senses.  And  she  moved  me  as  much  last 
night  as  she  moved  me  when  I  first  saw  her  play  the  part 
eleven  or  twelve  years  ago.  To  me,  sitting  where  I  was, 
not  too  near  the  stage,  she  might  have  been  five-and-twenty. 
I  saw  none  of  the  mechanism  of  the  art,  as  I  saw  it  in 
"  L'Aiglon " ;  here  art  still  concealed  art.  Her  vitality 
was  equal  to  the  vitality  of  Rejane  ;  it  is  differently  ex- 
pressed, that  is  all.  With  Rejane  the  vitality  is  direct ;  it 
is  the  appeal  of  Gavroche,  the  sharp,  impudent  urchin  of 
the  streets ;  Sarah  Bernhardt's  vitality  is  electrical,  and 
shoots  its  currents  through  all  manner  of  winding  ways. 
In  form  it  belongs  to  an  older  period,  just  as  the  writing 
of  Dumas  fi Is  belongs  to  an  earlier  period  than  the  writing  of 
Meilhac.  It  comes  to  us  with  the  tradition  to  which  it  has 
given  life  ;  it  does  not  spring  into  our  midst,  unruly  as  nature. 
But  it  is  in  "  Phedre  "  that  Sarah  Bernhardt  must  be 
seen,  if  we  are  to  realise  all  that  her  art  is  capable  of.  In 
writing  "  Phedre,"  Racine  anticipated  Sarah  Bernhardt.  If 
the  part  had  been  made  for  her  by  a  poet  of  our  own  days, 
it  could  not  have  been  brought  more  perfectly  within  her 
limits,  nor  could  it  have  more  perfectly  filled  those  limits 
to  their  utmost  edge.  It  is  one  of  the  greatest  parts  in 
poetical  drama,  and  it  is  written  with  a  sense  of  the  stage 
29 


Sarah  Bernhardt. 

not  less  sure  than  its  sense  of  dramatic  poetry.  There  was 
a  time  when  Racine  was  looked  upon  as  old-fashioned,  as 
conventional,  as  frigid.  It  is  realised  nowadays  that  his 
verse  has  cadences  like  the  cadences  of  Verlaine,  that  his 
language  is  as  simple  and  direct  as  prose,  and  that  he  is 
one  of  the  most  passionate  of  poets.  Of  the  character  of 
Phedre  Racine  tells  us  that  it  is  "  ce  que  j'ai  peut-etre  mis 
de  plus  raisonnable  sur  le  theatre."  The  word  strikes  oddly 
on  our  ears,  but  every  stage  of  the  passion  of  Phedre  is 
indeed  reasonable,  logical,  as  only  a  French  poet,  since  the 
Greeks  themselves,  could  make  it.  The  passion  itself  is  an 
abnormal,  an  insane  thing,  and  that  passion  comes  to  us 
with  all  its  force  and  all  its  perversity ;  but  the  words  in 
which  it  is  expressed  are  never  extravagant,  they  are  always 
clear,  simple,  temperate,  perfectly  precise  and  explicit.  The 
art  is  an  art  exquisitely  balanced  between  the  conventional 
and  the  realistic,  and  the  art  of  Sarah  Bernhardt,  when  she 
plays  the  part,  is  balanced  with  just  the  same  unerring  skill. 
She  seems  to  abandon  herself  wholly,  at  times,  to  her 
"  fureurs  "  ;  she  tears  the  words  with  her  teeth,  and  spits 
them  out  of  her  mouth,  like  a  wild  beast  ravening  upon 
prey ;  but  there  is  always  dignity,  restraint,  a  certain  re- 
moteness of  soul,  and  there  is  always  the  verse,  and  her 
miraculous  rendering  of  the  verse,  to  keep  Racine  in  the 
right  atmosphere.  Of  what  we  call  acting  there  is  little, 
little  change  in  the  expression  of  the  face.  The  part  is  a 
part  for  the  voice,  and  it  is  only  in  "  Phedre  "  that  one  can 
hear  that  orchestra,  her  voice,  in  all  its  variety  of  beauty. 
In  her  modern  plays,  plays  in  prose,  she  is  condemned  to 
use  only  a  few  of  the  instruments  of  the  orchestra :  an 

30 


Sarah  Bernhardt. 

actress  must,  in  such  parts,  be  conversational,  and  for  how 
much  beauty  or  variety  is  there  room  in  modern  conversa- 
tion ?  But  here  she  has  Racine's  verse,  along  with  Racine's 
psychology,  and  the  language  has  nothing  more  to  offer  the 
voice  of  a  tragic  actress.  She  seems  to  speak  her  words, 
her  lines,  with  a  kind  of  joyful  satisfaction ;  all  the  artist 
in  her  delights  in  the  task.  Her  nerves  are  in  it,  as  well  as 
her  intelligence ;  but  everything  is  coloured  by  the  poetry, 
everything  is  subordinate  to  beauty. 

Well,  and  she  seems  still  to  be  the  same  Phedre  that 
she  was  eleven  or  twelve  years  ago,  as  she  is  the  same 
"  Dame  aux  Camelias."  Is  it  reality,  is  it  illusion  ?  Illu- 
sion, perhaps,  but  an  illusion  which  makes  itself  into  a  very 
effectual  kind  of  reality.  She  has  played  these  pieces  until 
she  has  got  them,  not  only  by  heart,  but  by  every  nerve  and 
by  every  vein,  and  now  the  ghost  of  the  real  thing  is  so  like 
the  real  thing  that  there  is  hardly  any  telling  the  one  from 
the  other.  It  is  the  living  on  of  a  mastery  once  absolutely 
achieved,  without  so  much  as  the  need  of  a  new  effort. 
The  test  of  the  artist,  the  test  which  decides  how  far  the 
artist  is  still  living,  as  more  than  a  force  of  memory,  lies  in 
the  power  to  create  a  new  part,  to  bring  new  material  to 
life.  Last  year,  in  "  L'Aiglon,"  it  seemed  to  me  that  Sarah 
Bernhardt  showed  how  little  she  still  possessed  that  power, 
and  this  year  I  see  the  same  failure  in  "Francesca  da  Rimini.'* 

The  play,  it  must  be  admitted,  is  hopelessly  poor, 
common,  melodramatic,  without  atmosphere,  without 
nobility,  subtlety,  or  passion  ;  it  degrades  the  story  which 
we  owe  to  Dante  and  not  to  history  (for,  in  itself,  the 
story  is  a  quite  ordinary  story  of  adultery  :  Dante  and  the 


Sarah  Bernhardt. 

flames  of  his  hell  purged  it),  it  degrades  it  almost  out  of 
all  recognition.  These  middle-aged  people,  who  wrangle 
shrewishly  behind  the  just  turned  back  of  the  husband  and 
almost  in  the  hearing  of  the  child,  are  people  in  whom  it  is 
impossible  to  be  interested,  apart  from  any  fine  meanings 
put  into  them  in  the  acting.  And  yet,  since  M.  de  Max 
has  made  hardly  less  than  a  creation  out  of  the  part  of 
Giovanni,  filling  it,  as  he  has,  with  his  own  nervous  force 
and  passionately  restrained  art,  might  it  not  have  been 
possible  once  for  Sarah  Bernhardt  to  have  thrilled  us  even 
as  this  Francesca  of  Mr.  Marion  Crawford  ?  I  think  so  ; 
she  has  taken  bad  plays  as  willingly  as  good  plays,  to  turn 
them  to  her  own  purpose,  and  she  has  been  as  triumphant, 
if  not  as  fine,  in  bad  plays  as  in  good  ones.  Now  her 
Francesca  is  lifeless,  a  melodious  image,  making  meaningless 
music.  She  says  over  the  words,  cooingly,  chantingly,  or 
frantically,  as  the  expression-marks,  to  which  she  seems  to 
act,  demand.  The  interest  is  in  following  her  expression- 
marks. 

The  first  thing  one  notices  in  her  acting,  when  one  is  free 
to  watch  it  coolly,  is  the  way  in  which  she  subordinates 
effects  to  effect.  She  has  her  crescendos,  of  course,  and  it 
is  these  which  people  are  most  apt  to  remember,  but  the 
extraordinary  force  of  these  crescendos  comes  from  the 
smooth  and  level  manner  in  which  the  main  part  of  the 
speaking  is  done.  She  is  not  anxious  to  make  points  at 
every  moment,  to  put  all  the  possible  emphasis  into  every 
separate  phrase  ;  I  have  heard  her  glide  over  really  signifi- 
cant phrases  which,  taken  by  themselves,  would  seem  to 
deserve  more  consideration,  but  which  she  has  wisely 

32 


Sarah  Bernhardt. 

subordinated  to  an  overpowering  effect  of  ensemble.  Sarah 
Bernhardt's  acting  always  reminds  me  of  a  musical  per- 
formance. Her  voice  is  itself  an  instrument  of  music,  and 
she  plays  upon  it  as  a  conductor  plays  upon  an  orchestra. 
The  movements  of  her  body,  her  gestures,  the  expression  of 
her  face,  are  all  harmonious,  are  all  parts  of  a  single  harmony. 
It  is  not  reality  which  she  aims  at  giving  us,  it  is  reality 
transposed  into  another  atmosphere,  as  if  seen  in  a  mirror, 
in  which  all  its  outlines  become  more  gracious.  The  plea- 
sure which  we  get  from  seeing  her  as  Francesca  or  as 
Marguerite  Gautier  is  doubled  by  that  other  pleasure,  never 
completely  out  of  our  minds,  that  she  is  also  Sarah  Bern- 
hardt. One  sometimes  forgets  that  Rejane  is  acting  at  all ; 
it  is  the  real  woman  of  the  part,  Sapho,  or  Zaza,  or  Yanetta, 
who  lives  before  us.  Also  one  sometimes  forgets  that  Duse 
is  acting,  that  she  is  even  pretending  to  be  Magda  or  Silvia ; 
it  is  Duse  herself  who  lives  there,  on  the  stage.  But  Sarah 
Bernhardt  is  always  the  actress  as  well  as  the  part;  when 
she  is  at  her  best,  she  is  both  equally,  and  our  consciousness 
of  the  one  does  not  disturb  our  possession  by  the  other. 
When  she  is  not  at  her  best,  we  see  only  the  actress,  the 
incomparable  craftswoman  openly  labouring  at  her  work. 


33 


Rostand,  Sarah,  and  Coquelin. 

M.  ROSTAND  is  one  of  the  cleverest  of  contemporary 
writers.  He  appeals  to  the  readers  and  audiences  of  to- 
day as  a  millionaire  appeals  to  society.  He  enters  every 
door.  Critics  praise  him,  the  Academy  elects  him,  he  sells 
by  the  thousand  ;  French  actors  make  fortunes  by  him  at 
home,  and  take  him  over  the  world  in  one  long  triumph. 
He  is  translated,  and  played  in  all  the  native  languages  of 
the  countries  where  he  has  already  been  played  in  French. 
The  greatest  living  French  actress  and  the  greatest  living 
French  actor  join  together  to  increase  his  fame  and  their 
own.  At  this  moment  Sarah  Bernhardt  and  Coquelin  are  in 
London,  at  Her  Majesty's,  and  they  have  come  chiefly  in 
order  to  act  "  L'Aiglon,"  his  latest  success,  and,  we  are 
assured,  his  latest  masterpiece.  Well,  a  fame  of  this  kind, 
the  conquering,  on  whatever  terms,  of  so  much  of  the  world, 
means  something.  It  means  that  M.  Rostand  has  known 
exactly  what  he  wanted  to  do,  and  has  done  it.  With  an 
exquisite  agility  of  mind  he  has  run  between  many  dangers: 
he  has  been  poetic,  but  not  too  poetic ;  extravagant,  but  not 
too  extravagant ;  humorous,  but  not  too  humorous  ;  just 
sufficiently  simple,  precious,  modern,  archaic,  cynical,  and 
sentimental,  to  please  all  tastes.  He  has  learnt  declamation 
from  Victor  Hugo,  the  swing  of  sword  and  cape  from 
Dumas,  the  art  of  tight-rope  dancing  on  the  cord  of  French 
verse  from  Banville  ;  he  has  learnt,  from  some  business-like 
quality  of  his  own  mind,  how  to  avoid  Realism  and  Symbolism 
and  every  other  good  or  bad  poetical  school  of  the  day.  He 
writes  melodrama  with  so  neat  a  finish  to  the  flourish  that  it 

34 


Rostand,  Sarah,  and  Coquelin. 

can  easily  be  passed  off  as  tragedy ;  and  he  writes  verse 
with  so  deceptive  a  glitter  that  it  can  easily  be  passed  off  as 
poetry. 

In  fact,  if  I  could  get  one  obstinate  conviction  out  of  my 
head,  perhaps  I  might  enjoy  "  Cyrano  de  Bergerac." 
M.  Rostand's  play  is  written  in  verse  :  anything  which  is 
written  in  verse  must,  to  my  thinking,  be  poetry,  or  it  is 
nothing  ;  M.  Rostand's  verse  is  enormously  clever,  but  it  is 
not  poetry.  Now  I  notice,  by  the  enthusiasm  with  which 
"  Cyrano "  was  received,  both  in  France  and  England, 
when  it  made  its  first  appearance,  that  there  are  a  great 
many  people  who  do  not  limit  their  pleasures  as  I  do ;  who 
disagree  with  me  in  thinking  that  verse  need  necessarily  be 
poetry.  I  quite  understand  such  people  admiring  "  Cyrano." 
I  also  understand  the  feeling  of  those  who  consider  that 
"  Cyrano  "  is  poetry  of  a  particularly  novel  and  a  particu- 
larly exquisite  kind.  They  are  the  people  who  once  admired 
the  "  Love-Letters  of  a  Violinist "  and  who  now  admire 
the  "  Love-Letters  of  an  Englishwoman."  They  are  the 
people  who  admire  the  imitation  of  the  real  thing  more  than 
the  real  thing.  "  Cyrano  "  is  as  much  like  poetry  as  the 
brilliants  of  the  stage  are  like  diamonds.  It  is  made  to 
flash,  and  to  take  in  the  ignorant.  It  has  sentimentality  for 
the  sentimental,  artificial  fun  for  the  vulgar,  preciosity  for 
the  pretender  to  taste,  clatter  for  the  nursery  delight  of  the 
juvenile-minded,  rope-dancing  agility  for  the  admiration  of 
the  sportsman  in  art.  We  have  been  told  solemnly,  by 
critics  too  old  to  know  any  better,  that  the  play  marks  the 
renaissance  of  the  genuine  French  spirit ;  that  it  is  a 
triumphant  revolt  against  the  Northern  blasts,  the  Decadent 

35 


Rostand,  Sarah,  and  Coquelin. 

miasmas,  the  Symbolist  fogs,  which  have  been  making  France 
unfruitful.  If  to  possess  the  French  spirit  is  to  be  lacking 
in  ideas,  in  the  sense  of  reality,  in  sincerity,  in  passion,  in 
poetry ;  if  it  is  to  be  rhetorical,  frigidly  artificial,  cheap  in 
effect,  spendthrift  in  display ;  then,  and  then  only,  can 
"  Cyrano  "  be  accepted  on  the  terms  of  its  admirers. 

With  Coquelin  and  Sarah  Bernhardt  it  receives  a  splendid 
illumination.  The  part  of  Roxane  is  a  secondary  part,  and 
Sarah  for  once  is  secondary  in  the  play  in  which  she  acts. 
She  is  young,  beautiful,  and  a  little  ordinary  ;  amazingly 
young,  and  condemned  by  her  part  to  be  a  little  ordinary. 
In  a  piece  all  charades  and  stage  directions  she  has  no  chance 
to  be  any  one  of  her  finer  selves,  and  to  see  her  in  "  Cyrano  " 
immediately  after  seeing  her  in  "  Phedre  "  is  to  realise  the 
ability  of  the  artist,  and  how  much  the  artist  is  at  the 
command  of  the  actress.  She  gives  one  no  creation  ;  there 
is  no  creative  material  in  the  play  ;  but  all  there  is  to  do 
she  does  exquisitely.  As  for  Coquelin,  what  a  lesson  he  was 
to  our  gasconading  actors  !  Here,  in  a  piece  infinitely 
cleverer  than  the  sword  and  cape  pieces  in  which  Mr.  Lewis 
Waller  and  other  clever  English  actors  do  their  best  to  be 
humorously  heroic,  one  saw  the  blusterer  of  resource,  the 
sad  wit,  the  tender-hearted  spadassin.  Coquelin  has  the 
voice,  the  manner,  the  mimicry,  everything  that  is  needed 
to  carry  such  a  part  through  with  a  rush ;  it  is  a  part 
for  the  elocutionist,  and  Coquelin  is  an  incomparable 
elocutionist. 

On  the  night  on  which  I  saw  it,  "  L'Aiglon "  went  on 
until  after  midnight,  which  was  not  entirely  the  fault  of  the 
play.  It  was  a  fatiguing  performance,  which  was  not 
36 


Rostand,  Sarah,  and  Coquelin. 

entirely  the  fault  of  the  intervals.  Once  more  I  admired 
M.  Rostand's  cleverness,  as  I  saw  how  skilfully  it  had  been 
written  to  be  acted,  and  to  be  acted  by  just  these  two  people. 
Scrutinise  even  the  first  act,  and  you  will  see  that  it  has  been 
composed  like  a  piece  of  music,  to  be  played  by  one  per- 
former, Sarah  Bernhardt.  To  Sarah  Bernhardt  acting  is  a 
performance  on  a  musical  instrument.  One  seems  to  see  the 
expression  marks  :  piano,  pianissimo,  allargando,  and  just 
where  the  tempo  rubato  comes  in.  She  never  forgets  that 
art  is  not  nature,  and  that  when  one  is  speaking  verse  one  is 
not  talking  prose.  She  speaks  with  a  liquid  articulation  of 
every  syllable,  like  one  who  loves  the  savor  of  words  on  the 
tongue,  giving  them  a  beauty  and  an  expressiveness  often 
not  in  them  themselves.  Her  face  changes  less  than  you 
might  expect ;  it  is  not  over-possessed  by  detail,  it  gives 
always  the  synthesis.  The  smile  of  the  artist,  a  wonderful 
smile  which  has  never  aged  with  jher,  pierces  through  the 
passion  or  languor  of  the  part.  It  is  often  accompanied  by 
a  suave,  voluptuous  tossing  of  the  head,  and  is  like  the 
smile  of  one  who  inhales  some  delicious  perfume,  with  half- 
closed  eyes.  All  through  the  level  perfection  of  her  acting 
there  are  little  sharp  snaps  of  the  nerves ;  and  these  are  but 
one  indication  of  .^that  perfect  mechanism  which  her  art 
really  is.  Her  finger  is  always  upon  the  spring  ;  it  touches 
or  releases  it,  and  the  effect  follows  instantaneously. 
Coquelin,  in  his  equal  perfection,  his  ripe,  mellow  art,  his 
passion  of  humour,  his  touching  vehemence,  makes  himself 
seem  less  a  divine  machine,  more  a  delightfully  faulty 
person.  His  voice  is  firm,  sonorous,  flexible,  a  human, 
expressive,  amusing  voice,  not  the  elaborate  musical  instru- 

37 


Rostand,  Sarah,  and  Coquelin. 

ment  of  Sarah,  which  seems  to  go  by  itself,  caline,  cooing, 
lamenting,  raging,  or  in  that  wonderful  swift  chatter  which 
she  uses  with  such  instant  and  deliberate  effect.  His  face  is 
the  face  of  his  part,  always  a  disguise,  never  a  revelation. 
He  is  not  a  temperament,  nor  a  student,  nor  anything  apart 
from  the  art  of  the  actor ;  he  is  the  actor,  consummately 
master  of  his  metier.  And  how  much  the  master  of  them- 
selves are  all  these  French  actors,  whom  it  is  so  instructive 
for  us  to  see !  Movement,  gesture,  excitement,  are  natural 
to  them,  and,  so  far  from  needing  to  be  forced,  can  be 
vividly  and  temperately  repressed.  With  most  of  them 
acting  is  a  kind  of  second  nature,  and  a  nature  capable  of 
training.  With  Sarah  and  with  Coquelin  also,  nature  has 
been  trained  with  infinite  care  ;  but  then  nature,  with  them, 
happens  to  be  genius. 


Coquelin  and  Moliere:   Some  Aspects. 

I  SPENT  nearly  all  the  evenings  of  last  week  at  the  Garrick 
Theatre,  where  the  three  Coquelins  and  their  company  were 
acting  in  Moliere  and  in  some  famous  modern  pieces.  Of 
Moliere  I  saw  "  Tartuffe,"  "L'Avare,"  "  Le  Bourgeois 
Gentilhomme,"  "  Les  Precieuses  Ridicules,"  and  a  condensed 
version  of  "Le  Depit  Amoureux,"  in  which  the  four  acts  of 
the  original  were  cut  down  into  two.  Of  these  five  plays 
only  two  are  in  verse,  "  Tartuffe "  and  "  Le  Depit 
Amoureux,"  and  I  could  not  help  wishing  that  the  fashion 
of  Moliere's  day  had  allowed  him  to  write  all  his  plays  in 
prose.  Moliere  was  not  a  poet,  and  he  knew  that  he  was 
not  a  poet.  When  he  ventured  to  write  the  most  Shakes- 
pearean of  his  comedies,  "  L'Avare,"  in  prose,  "  le  meme 
prejuge,"  Voltaire  tells  us,  "  qui  avait  fait  tomber  4  le  Festin 
de  Pierre,'  parcequ'il  etait  en  prose,  nuisit  au  succes  de 
*  FAvare.'  Cependant  le  public  qui,  a  la  longue,  se  rend 
toujours  au  bon,  finit  par  donner  a  cet  ouvrage  les  applau- 
dissements  qu'il  merite.  On  comprit  alors  qu'il  peut  y 
avoir  de  forts  bonnes  comedies  en  prose."  How  infinitely 
finer,  as  prose,  is  the  prose  of  "  L'Avare  "  than  the  verse  of 
"Tartuffe"  as  verse!  In  "Tartuffe"  all  the  art  of  the 
actor  is  required  to  carry  you  over  the  artificial  jangle  of  the 
alexandrines  without  allowing  you  to  perceive  too  clearly 
that  this  man,  who  is  certainly  not  speaking  poetry,  is 
speaking  in  rhyme.  Moliere  was  a  great  prose  writer,  but 
I  do  not  remember  a  line  of  poetry  in  the  whole  of  his  work 
in  verse.  The  whole  temper  of  his  mind  was  the  temper  of 
mind  of  the  prose-writer.  His  wordly  wisdom,  his  active 

39 


Coquelin  and  Moliere:   Some  Aspects. 

philosophy,  the  very  mainspring  of  his  plots,  are  found, 
characteristically,  in  his  valets  and  his  servant-maids.  He 
satirises  the  miser,  the  hypocrite,  the  bas-bleu,  but  he 
chuckles  over  Frosine  and  Gros-Ren6 ;  he  loves  them  for 
their  freedom  of  speech  and  their  elastic  minds,  ready  in 
words  or  deeds.  They  are  his  chorus,  if  the  chorus  might 
be  imagined  as  directing  the  action. 

But  Moliere  has  a  weakness,  too,  for  the  bourgeois,  and 
he  has  made  M.  Jourdain  immortally  delightful.  There  is 
not  a  really  cruel  touch  in  the  whole  character  ;  we  laugh 
at  him  so  freely  because  Moliere  lets  us  laugh  with  such 
kindliness.  M.  Jourdain  has  a  robust  joy  in  life  ;  he  carries 
off  his  absurdities  by  the  simple  good  faith  which  he  puts 
into  them.  When  I  speak  of  M.  Jourdain  I  hardly  know 
whether  I  am  speaking  of  the  character  in  Moliere  or  of  the 
character  in  Goquelin.  Probably  there  is  no  difference. 
We  get  Moliere's  vast,  succulent  farce  of  the  intellect 
rendered  with  an  art  like  his  own.  If  this,  in  every  detail, 
is  not  what  Moliere  meant,  then  so  much  the  worse  for 
Moliere. 

Moliere  is  kind  to  his  bourgeois,  envelops  him  softly  in 
satire  as  in  cotton-wool,  dandles  him  like  a  great  baby  ;  and 
Coquelin  is  without  bitterness,  stoops  to  make  stupidity 
heroic,  a  distinguished  stupidity.  A  study  in  comedy  so 
profound,  so  convincing,  so  full  of  human  nature  and  of  the 
art-concealing  art  of  the  stage,  has  not  been  seen  in  our 
time.  As  Mascarille,  in  "  Les  PreVieuses  Ridicules," 
Coquelin  becomes  delicate  and  extravagant,  a  scented 
whirlwind  ;  his  parody  is  more  splendid  than  the  thing 
itself  which  he  parodies,  more  full  of  fine  show  and  nimble 
40 


Coquelin  and  Moliere :   Some  Aspects. 

bravery.  There  is  beauty  in  this  broadly  comic  acting,  the 
beauty  of  subtle  (detail.  Words  can  do  little  to  define  a 
performance  which  is  a  constant  series  of  little  movements 
of  the  face,  little  intonations  of  the  voice,  a  way  of 
lolling  in  the  chair,  a  way  of  speaking,  of  singing,  of 
preserving  the  gravity  of  burlesque.  In  "  Tartuffe  "  we 
get  a  form  of  comedy  which  is  almost  tragic,  the  horribly 
serious  comedy  of  the  hypocrite.  Coquelin,  who  remakes 
his  face,  as  by  a  prolonged  effort  of  the  muscles,  for  every 
part,  makes,  for  this  part,  a  great  fish's  face,  heavy, 
suppressed,  with  lowered  eyelids  and  a  secret  mouth,  out  of 
which  steals  at  times  some  stealthy  avowal.  He  has  the 
movements  of  a  great  slug,  or  of  a  snail,  if  you  will, 
putting  out  itsjhead  and  drawing  it  back  into  its  shell. 
The  face  waits  and  plots,  with  a  sleepy  immobility,  covering 
a  hard,  indomitable  will.  It  is  like  a  drawing  of  Daumier, 
if  you  can  imagine  a  drawing  which  renews  itself  at  every 
instant,  in  a  series  of  poses  to  which  it  is  hardly  necessary 
to  add  words. 

I  am  told  that  Coquelin,  in  the  creation  of  a  part,  makes 
his  way  slowly,  surely,  inwards,  for  the  first  few  weeks  of 
his  performance,  and  that  then  the  thing  is  finished,  to  the 
least  intonation  or  gesture,  and  can  be  laid  down  and  taken 
up  at  will,  without  a  shade  of  difference  in  the  interpreta- 
tion. The  part  of  Maitre  Jacques  in  "  L'Avare,"  for 
instance,  which  he  performed  with  such  gusto  and  such 
certainty  on  Friday  night,  had  not  been  acted  by  him  for 
twenty  years,  and  it  was  done,  without  rehearsal,  in  the 
midst  of  a  company  that  required  prompting  at  every 
moment.  I  suppose  this  method  of  moulding  a  part,  as  if 

41 


Coquelin  and  Moliere :   Some  Aspects. 

in  wet  clay,  and  then  allowing  it  to  take  hard,  final  form, 
is  the  method  natural  to  the  comedian,  his  right  method. 
I  can  hardly  think  that  the  tragic  actor  should  ever  allow 
himself  to  become  so  much  at  home  with  his  material ;  that 
he  dare  ever  allow  his  clay  to  become  quite  hard.  He  has 
to  deal  with  the  continually  shifting  stuff  of  the  soul  and  of 
the  passions,  with  nature  at  its  least  generalised  moments. 
The  comic  actor  deals  with  nature  for  the  most  part 
generalised,  with  things  palpably  absurd,  with  characteristics 
that  strike  the  intelligence,  not  with  emotions  that  touch 
the  heart  or  the  senses.  He  comes  to  more  definite  and  to 
more  definable  results,  on  which  he  may  rest,  confident  that 
what  has  made  an  audience  laugh  once  will  make  it  laugh 
always,  laughter  being  a  physiological  thing,  wholly  inde- 
pendent of  mood. 

In  thinking  of  some  excellent  comic  actors  of  our  own,  I 
am  struck  by  the  much  greater  effort  which  they  seem  to 
make  in  order  to  drive  their  points  home,  and  in  order  to 
get  what  they  think  variety.  Sir  Charles  Wyndham  is  the 
only  English  actor  I  can  think  of  at  the  moment  who  does 
not  make  unnecessary  grimaces,  who  does  not  insist  on 
acting  when  the  difficult  thing  is  not  to  act.  In 
"  Tartuffe "  Coquelin  stands  motionless  for  five  minutes 
at  a  time,  without  change  of  expression,  and  yet  nothing 
can  be  more  expressive  than  his  face  at  those  moments. 
In  Chopin's  G  Minor  Nocturne,  Op.  15,  there  is  an  F  held 
for  three  bars,  and  when  Rubinstein  played  the  Nocturne, 
says  Mr.  Huneker  in  his  instructive  and  delightful  book 
on  Chopin,  he  prolonged  the  tone,  "  by  some  miraculous 
means,"  so  that  "  it  swelled  and  diminished,  and  went 
42 


Coquelin  and  Moliere  :   Some  Aspects. 

singing  into  D,  as  if  the  instrument  were  an  organ."  It  is 
that  power  of  sustaining  an  expression,  unchanged,  and  yet 
always  full  of  living  significance,  that  I  find  in  Coquelin. 
It  is  part  of  his  economy,  the  economy  of  the  artist.  The 
improviser  disdains  economy,  as  much  as  the  artist  cherishes 
it.  Coquelin  has  some  half-dozen  complete  variations  of 
the  face  he  has  composed  for  Tartuffe  ;  no  more  than  that, 
with  no  insignificances  of  expression  thrown  away ;  but 
each  variation  is  a  new  point  of  view,  from  which  we  see 
the  whole  character. 


43 


Rejane  and  Jane  Hading. 


THE  genius  of  Rejane  is  a  kind  of  finesse :  it  is  a  flavour, 
and  all  the  ingredients  of  the  dish  may  be  named  without 
denning  it.  The  thing  is  Parisian,  but  that  is  only  to  say 
that  it  unites  nervous  force  with  a  wicked  ease  and  mastery 
of  charm.  It  speaks  to  the  senses  through  the  brain,  as 
much  as  to  the  brain  through  the  senses.  It  is  the  feminine 
equivalent  of  intellect.  It  "  magnetises  our  poor  vertebrae," 
in  Baudelaire's  phrase,  because  it  is  sex  and  yet  not  instinct. 
It  is  sex  civilised,  under  direction,  playing  a  part,  as  we  say 
of  others  than  those  on  the  stage.  It  calculates,  and  is 
unerring.  It  has  none  of  the  vulgar  warmth  of  mere  passion, 
none  of  its  health  or  simplicity.  It  leaves  a  little  red  sting 
where  it  has  kissed.  And  it  intoxicates  us  by  its  appeal  to 
so  many  sides  of  our  nature  at  once.  We  are  thrilled,  and 
we  admire,  and  are  almost  coldly  appreciative,  and  yet  aglow 
with  the  response  of  the  blood.  I  have  found  myself 
applauding  with  tears  in  my  eyes.  The  feeling  and  the 
critical  approval  came  together,  hand  in  hand :  neither 
counteracted  the  other. 

Rejane  can  be  vulgar,  as  nature  is  vulgar  :  she  has  all  the 
instincts  of  the  human  animal,  of  the  animal  woman,  whom 
man  will  never  quite  civilise.  There  is  no  doubt  of  it, 
nature  lacks  taste ;  and  woman,  who  is  so  near  to  nature, 
lacks  taste  in  the  emotions.  Rejane,  in  "  Sapho "  or  in 
"  Zaza  "  for  instance,  is  woman  naked  and  shameless,  loving 
and  suffering  with  all  her  nerves  and  muscles,  a  gross, 
pitiable,  horribly  human  thing,  whose  direct  appeal,  like  that 
of  a  sick  animal,  seizes  you  by  the  throat  at  the  instant  in 

44 


Rejane  and  Jane  Hading. 

which  it  reaches  your  eyes  and  ears.  More  than  any  actress 
she  is  the  human  animal  without  disguise  or  evasion ;  with 
all  the  instincts,  all  the  natural  cries  and  movements.  In 
"  Sapho  "  or  "Zaza"  she  speaks  the  language  of  the  senses, 
no  more  ;  and  her  acting  reminds  you  of  all  that  you  may 
possibly  have  forgotten  of  how  the  senses  speak  when  they 
speak  through  an  ignorant  woman  in  Idve.  It  is  like  an 
accusing  confirmation  of  some  of  one's  guesses  at  truth, 
before  the  realities  of  the  flesh  and  of  the  affections  of  the 
flesh.  Scepticism  is  no  longer  possible  :  the  thing  is  before 
you,  abominably  real,  a  disquieting  and  irrefutable  thing, 
which  speaks  with  its  own  voice,  as  it  has  never  spoken  on 
the  stage  through  any  other  actress. 

In  "  Zaza,"  a  play  made  for  Rejane  by  two  playwrights 
who  had  set  themselves  humbly  to  a  task,  the  task  of  fitting 
her  with  a  part,  she  is  seen  doing  "  Sapho  "  over  again,  with 
a  difference.  Zaza  is  a  vulgar  woman,  a  woman  without 
instruction  or  experience ;  she  has  not  known  poets  and  been 
the  model  of  a  great  sculptor ;  she  comes  straight  from  the 
boards  of  a  cafe-concert  to  the  kept  woman's  house  in  the 
country.  She  has  caught  her  lover  vulgarly,  to  win  a  bet ; 
and,  to  the  end,  you  realise  that  she  is,  well,  a  woman  who 
would  do  that.  She  has  no  depth  of  passion,  none  of  Sapho's 
roots  in  the  earth  ;  she  has  a  "  beguin  "  for  Dufresne,  she  will 
drop  everything  else  for  it,  such  as  it  is,  and  she  is  capable 
of  good,  hearty  suffering.  Rejane  gives  her  to  us  as  she  is, 
in  all  her  commonness.  The  picture  is  full  of  humour  ;  it 
is,  as  I  so  often  feel  with  Rejane,  a  Forain.  Like  Forain, 
she  uses  her  material  without  ever  being  absorbed  by  it, 
without  relaxing  her  impersonal  artistic  energy.  In  being 

45 


Rejane  and  Jane  Hading. 

Zaza,  she  is  so  far  from  being  herself  (what  is  the  self  of  a 
great  actress  ?)  that  she  has  invented  a  new  way  of  walking, 
as  well  as  new  tones  and  grimaces.  There  is  not  an  effect  in 
the  play  which  she  has  not  calculated ;  only,  she  has  calcu- 
lated every  effect  so  exactly  that  the  calculation  is  not  seen. 
When  you  watch  Mme.  Jane  Hading,  you  see  her  effects 
coming,  several  seconds  before  they  are  there ;  when  they 
come,  they  come  neatly,  but  with  no  surprise  in  them,  and 
therefore  with  no  conviction.  There  lies  all  the  difference 
between  the  actress  who  is  an  actress  equally  by  her  tempera- 
ment and  by  her  brain  and  the  actress  who  has  only  the 
brain  (and,  with  Mme.  Hading,  beauty)  to  rely  on.  Every- 
thing that  Rejane  can  think  of  she  can  do ;  thought 
translates  itself  instantly  into  feeling,  and  the  embodied 
impulse  is  before  you.  Mme.  Hading  knows  so  well 
how  everything  should  be  done ;  she  knows  just  how 
Sarah  Bernhardt,  if  not  nature,  would  do  it ;  and  she 
gives  you  a  series  of  the  most  admirable  lifeless  studies,  in 
which  only  her  eyes  live  with  a  vehement  personal  life  of 
their  own. 

In  watching  Mme.  Hading  I  am  sometimes  reminded  of 
Mrs.  Kendal.  Mme.  Hading  is  a  woman  of  strange,  attrac- 
tive beauty.  There  is  the  mass  of  bronze  hair,  there  are  the 
square  lines  of  the  face,  the  level  eyebrows,  and  sullen, 
suppressed  eyes,  the  square  shoulders,  the  fine,  heavy  lines 
of  the  neck  and  chin.  And  it  is  no  empty  or  expression- 
less beauty,  it  is  a  beauty  full  of  some  enigmatical  meaning. 
But  Mrs.  Kendal  is  the  better  actress,  because  she  is  able  to 
persuade  a  greater  number  of  people  that  her  deliberation  is 
instinctive,  although  in  both  there  is  the  same  essential 
46 


Rejane  and  Jane  Hading. 

artificiality.  Both  try  to  do  by  a  careful  method  what  can  only 
be  done,  as  Rejane  does  it,  by  a  method  plus  something  else. 
That  something  else  is  genius,  perhaps ;  but  if  the  word 
genius  sounds  a  little  vague,  let  me  say  that  it  is  vitality, 
temperament,  sincerity.  When  Mme.  Hading  is  perfectly 
quiet,  when  she  is  thinking,  making  up  her  mind, 
she  is  often  admirable  ;  but  see  her  when  she  has  to  show 
acute  emotion.  There  is,  first,  the  contraction  of  the  cat 
about  to  spring,  and  there  is  a  very  splutter  of  simulated 
energy,  with  the  elegant  collapse  at  the  end.  Now  she 
turns  on  her  voice,  now  she  turns  it  off;  she  seems  to 
be  doing  just  what  an  excited  woman  would  do,  and  yet 
you  are  never  sorry,  never  even  interested.  You  say : 
"  Yes,  that  was  really  very  well  done,"  but  you  say  it 
coldly ;  the  actress  has  only  acted.  When  Rejane  is  Zaza, 
she  acts,  and  is  the  woman  she  acts  ;  and  you  have  to  think, 
before  you  remember  how  elaborate  a  science  goes  to  the 
making  of  that  thrill  which  you  are  almost  cruelly  enjoying. 


47 


Sir  Henry  Irving. 

As  I  watched,  at  the  Lyceum,  the  sad  and  eager  face  of 
Duse,  leaning  forward  out  of  a  box,  and  gazing  at  the  eager 
and  gentle  face  of  Irving,  I  could  not  help  contrasting  the 
two  kinds  of  acting  summed  up  in  those  two  faces.  The 
play  was  "  Olivia,"  W.  G.  Wills'  poor  and  stagey  version 
of  "  The  Vicar  of  Wakefield,"  in  which,  however,  not  even 
the  lean  intelligence  of  a  modern  playwright  could  quite 
banish  the  homely  and  gracious  and  tender  charm  of  Gold- 
smith. As  Dr.  Primrose,  Irving  was  almost  at  his  best  ; 
that  is  to  say,  not  at  his  greatest,  but  at  his  most  equable 
level  of  good  acting.  All  his  distinction  was  there,  his 
nobility,  his  restraint,  his  fine  convention.  For  Irving  re- 
presents the  old  school  of  acting,  just  as  Duse  represents 
the  new  school.  To  Duse,  acting  is  a  thing  almost  wholly 
apart  from  action ;  she  thinks  on  the  stage,  scarcely  moves 
there ;  when  she  feels  emotion,  it  is  her  chief  care  not  to 
express  it  with  emphasis,  but  to  press  it  down  into  her  soul, 
until  only  the  pained  reflection  of  it  glimmers  out  of  her 
eyes  and  trembles  in  the  hollows  of  her  cheeks.  To  Irving, 
on  the  contrary,  acting  is  all  that  the  word  literally  means ; 
it  is  an  art  of  sharp,  detached,  yet  always  delicate,  move- 
ment ;  he  crosses  the  stage  with  intention,  as  he  intentionally 
adopts  a  fine,  crabbed,  personal,  highly  conventional  elocution 
of  his  own  ;  he  is  an  actor,  and  he  acts,  keeping  nature,  or 
the  too  close  resemblance  of  nature,  carefully  out  of  his 
composition. 

With  Miss  Terry  there  is  only  the  personal  charm  of  a 
very  natural  nature,  which  has  become  deliciously  sophisti- 
48 


Sir  Henry  Irving. 

cated.  She  is  the  eternal  girl,  and  she  can  never  grow  old  ; 
one  might  say,  she  can  never  grow  up.  She  learns  her  part, 
taking  it  quite  artificially,  as  a  part  to  be  learnt ;  and  then, 
at  her  frequent  moments  of  forgetfulness,  charms  us  into 
delight,  though  never  into  conviction,  by  a  gay  abandon- 
ment to  the  self  of  a  passing  moment.  Irving's  acting  is 
almost  a  science,  and  it  is  a  science  founded  on  tradition. 
It  is  in  one  sense  his  personality  that  makes  him  what  he 
is,  the  only  actor  on  the  English  stage  who  has  a  touch  of 
genius.  But  he  has  not  gone  to  himself  to  invent  an  art 
wholly  personal,  wholly  new ;  his  acting  is  no  interruption 
of  an  intense  inner  life,  but  a  craftsmanship  into  which  he 
has  put  all  he  has  to  give.  It  is  an  art  wholly  of  rhetoric, 
that  is  to  say  wholly  external ;  his  emotion  moves  to  slow 
music,  crystallises  into  an  attitude,  dies  upon  a  long-drawn- 
out  word.  He  appeals  to  us,  to  our  sense  of  what  is 
expected,  to  our  accustomed  sense  of  the  logic,  not  of  life, 
but  of  life  as  we  have  always  seen  it  on  the  stage,  by  his  way 
of  taking  snuff;  of  taking  out  his  pocket-handkerchief,  of 
lifting  his  hat,  of  crossing  his  legs.  He  has  observed  life 
in  order  to  make  his  own  version  of  life,  using  the  stage  as 
his  medium,  and  accepting  the  traditional  aids  and  limita- 
tions of  the  stage. 

Take  him  in  one  of  his  typical  parts,  in  "Louis  XL'r 
His  Louis  XI.  is  a  masterpiece  of  grotesque  art.  It  is  a 
study  in  senility,  and  it  is  the  grotesque  art  of  the  thing 
which  saves  it  from  becoming  painful.  This  shrivelled 
carcase,  from  which  age,  disease,  and  fear  have  picked  all  the 
flesh,  leaving  the  bare  framework  of  bone  and  the  drawn 
and  cracked  covering  of  yellow  skin,  would  be  unendurable 

49  » 


Sir  Henry  Irving. 

in  its  irreverent  copy  of  age  if  it  were  not  so  obviously  a 
picture,  with  no  more  malice  than  there  is  in  the  delicate 
lines  and  fine  colours  of  a  picture.  The  figure  is  at  once 
Punch  and  the  oldest  of  the  Chelsea  pensioners ;  it  distracts 
one  between  pity,  terror,  and  disgust,  but  is  altogether 
absorbing ;  one  watches  it  as  one  would  watch  some  feeble 
ancient  piece  of  mechanism,  still  working,  which  may  snap 
at  any  moment.  In  such  a  personation,  make-up  becomes 
a  serious  part  of  art.  It  is  the  picture  that  magnetises  us, 
and  every  wrinkle  seems  to  have  been  studied  in  movement ; 
the  hands  act  almost  by  themselves,  as  if  every  finger  were 
a  separate  actor.  The  passion  of  fear,  the  instinct  of  craft, 
the  malady  of  suspicion,  in  a  frail  old  man  who  has  power 
over  every  one  but  himself :  that  is  what  Sir  Henry  Irving 
represents,  in  a  performance  which  is  half  precise  physiology, 
half  palpable  artifice,  but  altogether  a  unique  thing  in 
art. 

See  him  in  "  The  Merchant  of  Venice."  His  Shylock  is 
noble  and  sordid,  pathetic  and  terrifying.  It  is  one  of  his 
great  parts,  made  up  of  pride,  stealth,  anger,  minute  and 
varied  picturesqueness,  and  a  diabolical  subtlety.  Whether 
he  paws  at  his  cloak,  or  clutches  upon  the  handle  of  his 
stick,  or  splutters  hatred,  or  cringes  before  his  prey,  or 
shakes  with  lean  and  wrinkled  laughter,  he  is  always  the 
great  part  and  the  great  actor.  See  him  as  Mephistopheles  in 
"  Faust."  The  Lyceum  performance  is  a  superb  pantomime, 
with  one  overpowering  figure  drifting  through  it  and  in 
some  sort  directing  it,  the  red-plumed  devil  Mephistopheles, 
who,  in  Sir  Henry  Irving's  impersonation  of  him,  becomes 
a  kind  of  weary  spirit,  a  melancholy  image  of  unhappy 

5° 


Sir  Henry  Irving. 

pride,  holding  himself  up  to  the  laughter  of  inferior  beings, 
with  the  old  acknowledgment  that  "  the  devil  is  an  ass." 
A  head  like  the  head  of  Dante,  shown  up  by  coloured 
lights,  and  against  chromo-lithographic  backgrounds,  while 
all  the  diabolic  intelligence  is  set  to  work  on  the  cheap  triumph 
of  wheedling  a  widow  and  screwing  Rhenish  and  Tokay 
with  a  gimlet  out  of  an  inn  table  :  it  is  partly  Goethe's  fault, 
and  partly  the  fault  of  Wills,  and  partly  the  lowering  trick 
of  the  stage.  Mephistopheles  is  not  really  among  Irving's 
great  parts,  but  it  is  among  his  picturesque  parts.  With 
his  restless  strut,  a  blithe  and  aged  tripping  of  the  feet  to 
some  not  quite  human  measure,  he  is  like  some  spectral 
marionette,  playing  a  game  only  partly  his  own.  For  such 
a  part  no  mannerism  can  seem  unnatural,  and  the  image 
with  its  solemn  mask  lives  in  a  kind  of  galvanic  life  of  its 
own,  seductively,  with  some  mocking  suggestion  of  his 
"  cousin  the  snake."  Here  and  there  some  of  the  old  power 
is  now  lacking  ;  but  whatever  was  once  subtle  and  insinuating 
remains. 

Shakespeare  at  the  Lyceum  is  always  a  magnificent  spec- 
tacle, and  "  Coriolanus,"  the  last  Shakespearean  revival  there, 
was  a  magnificent  spectacle.  It  is  a  play  made  up  princi- 
pally of  one  character  and  a  crowd,  the  crowd  being  a  sort 
of  moving  background,  treated  in  Shakespeare's  large  and 
scornful  way.  A  stage  crowd  at  the  Lyceum  always  gives 
one  a  sense  of  exciting  movement,  and  this  Roman  rabble 
did  all  that  was  needed  to  show  off  the  almost  solitary 
splendour  of  Coriolanus.  He  is  the  proudest  man  in 
Shakespeare,  and  Sir  Henry  Irving  is  at  his  best  when  he 
embodies  pride.  His  conception  of  the  part  was  masterly : 


Sir  Henry  Irving. 

it  had  imagination,  nobility,  quietude.  With  opportunity 
for  ranting  in  every  second  speech,  he  never  ranted,  but 
played  what  might  well  have  been  a  roaring  part  with  a 
kind  of  gentleness.  With  every  opportunity  for  extrava- 
gant gesture,  he  stood,  as  the  play  seemed  to  foam  about 
him,  like  a  rock  against  which  the  foam  beats.  Made  up 
as  a  kind  of  Roman  Moltke,  the  lean,  thoughtful  soldier,  he 
spoke  throughout  with  a  slow,  contemptuous  enunciation, 
as  of  one  only  just  not  too  lofty  to  sneer.  Restrained  in 
scorn,  he  kept  throughout  an  attitude  of  disdainful  pride, 
the  face,  the  eyes,  set,  while  only  his  mouth  twitched, 
seeming  to  chew  his  words,  with  the  disgust  of  one  swallowing 
a  painful  morsel.  Where  other  actors  would  have  raved, 
he  spoke  with  bitter  humour,  a  humour  that  seemed  to 
hurt  the  speaker,  the  concise,  active  humour  of  the  soldier, 
putting  his  words  rapidly  into  deeds.  And  his  pride  was 
an  intellectual  pride ;  the  weakness  of  a  character,  but  the 
angry  dignity  of  a  temperament.  I  have  never  seen  Irving' 
so  restrained,  so  much  an  artist,  so  faithfully  interpretative 
of  a  masterpiece.  Something  of  energy,  no  doubt,  was 
lacking ;  but  everything  was  there,  except  the  emphasis 
which  I  most  often  wish  away  in  acting. 


Duse  in  Some  of  Her  Parts. 


I. 

THE  acting  of  Duse  is  a  criticism;  poor  work  dissolves  away 
under  it,  as  under  a  solvent  acid.  Not  one  of  the  plays 
which  she  has  brought  with  her  is  a  play  on  the  level  of 
her  intelligence  and  of  her  capacity  for  expressing  deep 
human  emotion.  Take  "  The  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray."  It 
is  a  very  able  play,  it  is  quite  an  interesting  glimpse  into  a 
particular  kind  of  character,  but  it  is  only  able,  and  it  is 
only  a  glimpse.  Paula,  as  conceived  by  Mr.  Pinero,  is  a 
thoroughly  English  type  of  woman,  the  nice,  slightly  morbid, 
somewhat  unintelligently  capricious  woman  who  has  "gone 
wrong,"  and  who  finds  it  quite  easy,  though  a  little  dull,  to 
go  right  when  the  chance  is  offered  to  her.  She  is  observed 
from  the  outside,  very  keenly  observed ;  her  ways,  her  surface 
tricks  of  emotion,  are  caught;  she  is  a  person  whom  we 
know  or  remember.  But  what  is  skin-deep  in  Paula  as  con- 
ceived by  Mr.  Pinero  becomes  a  real  human  being,  a  human 
being  with  a  soul,  in  the  Paula  conceived  by  Duse.  Paula 
as  played  by  Duse  is  sad  and  sincere,  where  the  English- 
woman is  only  irritable ;  she  has  the  Italian  simplicity  and 
directness  in  place  of  that  terrible  English  capacity  for 
uncertainty  in  emotion  and  huffiness  in  manner.  She  brings 
profound  tragedy,  the  tragedy  of  a  soul  which  has  sinned 
and  suffered,  and  tries  vainly  to  free  itself  from  the  conse- 
quences of  its  deeds,  into  a  study  of  circumstances  in  their 
ruin  of  material  happiness.  And,  frankly,  the  play  cannot 
stand  it.  When  this  woman  bows  down  under  her  fate  in 

53 


Duse  in  Some  of  Her  Parts. 

so  terrible  a  spiritual  loneliness,  realising  that  we  cannot 
fight  against  Fate,  and  that  Fate  is  only  the  inevitable 
choice  of  our  own  natures,  we  wait  for  the  splendid  words 
which  shall  render  so  great  a  situation ;  and  no  splendid 
words  come.  The  situation,  to  the  dramatist,  has  been 
only  a  dramatic  situation.  Here  is  Duse,  a  chalice  for  the 
wine  of  imagination,  but  the  chalice  remains  empty.  It  is 
almost  painful  to  see  her  waiting  for  the  words  that  do 
not  come,  offering  tragedy  to  us  in  her  eyes,  and  with  her 
hands,  and  in  her  voice,  only  not  in  the  words  that  she 
says  or  in  the  details  of  the  action  which  she  is  condemned 
to  follow. 

See  Mrs.  Patrick  Campbell  playing  "  The  Second  Mrs. 
Tanqueray,"  and  you  will  see  it  played  exactly  according  to 
Mr.  Pinero's  intention,  and  played  brilliantly  enough  to  dis- 
tract our  notice  from  what  is  lacking  in  the  character.  A 
fantastic  and  delightful  contradiction,  half  gamine,  half 
Burne-Jones,  she  confuses  our  judgment,  as  a  Paula  in  real 
life  might,  and  leaves  us  attracted  and  repelled,  and,  above 
all,  interested.  But  Duse  has  no  resources  outside  simple 
human  nature.  If  she  cannot  convince  you  by  the  thing 
in  itself,  she  cannot  disconcert  you  by  a  paradox  about  it. 
Well,  this  passionately  sincere  acting,  this  one  real  person 
moving  about  among  the  dolls  of  the  piece,  shows  up  all 
that  is  mechanical,  forced,  and  unnatural  in  the  construc- 
tion of  a  play  never  meant  to  withstand  the  searchlight  of 
this  woman's  creative  intelligence.  Whatever  is  theatrical 
and  obvious  starts  out  into  sight.  The  good  things  are 
transfigured,  the  bad  things  merely  discovered.  And  so,  by 
a  kind  of  naivete  in  the  acceptance  of  emotion  for  all  it 

54- 


Duse  in  Some  of  Her  Parts. 

might  be,  instead  of  for  the  little  that  it  is,  by  an  almost 
perverse  simplicity  and  sincerity  in  the  treatment  of  a  super- 
ficial and  insincere  character,  Duse  plays  "  The  Second  Mrs. 
Tanqueray "  in  the  grand  manner,  destroying  the  illusion 
of  the  play  as  she  proves  over  again  the  supremacy  of  her 
own  genius. 

II. 

WHILE  I  watch  Duse's  Magda,  I  can  conceive,  for  the  time, 
of  no  other.  Realising  the  singer  as  being  just  such  an 
artist  as  herself,  she  plays  the  part  with  hardly  a  suggestion 
of  the  stage,  except  the  natural  woman's  intermittent  loath- 
ing for  it.  She  has  been  a  great  artist ;  yes,  but  that  is 
nothing  to  her.  "  I  am  I,"  as  she  says,  and  she  has  lived. 
And  we  see  before  us,  all  through  the  play,  a  woman  who 
has  lived  with  all  her  capacity  for  joy  and  sorrow,  who  has 
thought  with  all  her  capacity  for  seeing  clearly  what  she  is 
unable,  perhaps,  to  help  doing.  She  does  not  act,  that  is, 
explain  herself  to  us,  emphasise  herself  for  us.  She  lets  us 
overlook  her,  with  a  supreme  unconsciousness,  a  supreme 
affectation  of  unconsciousness,  which  is  of  course  very  con- 
scious art,  an  art  so  perfect  as  to  be  almost  literally  decep- 
tive. I  do  not  know  if  she  plays  with  exactly  the  same 
gestures  night  after  night,  but  I  can  quite  imagine  it.  She 
has  certain  little  caresses,  the  half  awkward  caresses  of  real 
people,  not  the  elegant  curves  and  convolutions  of  the 
stage,  which  always  enchant  me  beyond  any  mimetic  move- 
ments I  have  ever  seen.  She  has  a  way  of  letting  her  voice 
apparently  get  beyond  her  own  control,  and  of  looking  as  if 
emotion  has  left  her  face  expressionless,  as  it  often  leaves 

55 


Duse  in  Some  of  Her  Parts. 

the  faces  of  real  people,  thus  carrying  the  illusion  of  reality 
almost  further  than  it  is  possible  to  carry  it,  only  never 
quite. 

I  was  looking  this  afternoon  at  Whistler's  portrait  of 
Carlyle  at  the  Guildhall,  and  I  find  in  both  the  same  final 
art :  that  art  of  perfect  expression,  perfect  suppression, 
perfect  balance  of  every  quality,  so  that  a  kind  of  negative 
thing  becomes  a  thing  of  the  highest  achievement.  Name 
every  fault  to  which  the  art  of  the  actor  is  liable,  and  you 
will  have  named  every  fault  which  is  lacking  in  Duse. 
And  the  art  of  the  actor  is  in  itself  so  much  a  compound  of 
false  emphasis  and  every  kind  of  wilful  exaggeration,  that 
to  have  any  negative  merit  is  to  have  already  a  merit  very 
positi/e.  Having  cleared  away  all  that  is  not  wanted,  Duse 
begins  to  create.  And  she  creates  out  of  life  itself  an  art 
which  no  one  before  her  had  ever  imagined  :  not  realism, 
not  a  copy,  but  the  thing  itself,  the  evocation  of  thoughtful 
life,  the  creation  of  the  world  over  again,  as  actual  and 
beautiful  a  thing  as  if  the  world  had  never  existed. 


III. 

"LA  GIOCONDA  "  is  the  first  play  in  which  Duse  has  had 
beautiful  words  to  speak,  and  a  poetical  conception  of 
character  to  render ;  and  her  acting  in  it  is  more  beautiful 
and  more  poetical  than  it  was  possible  for  it  to  be  in 
"  Magda,"  or  in  "  The  Second  Mrs.  Tanqueray."  But  the 
play  is  not  a  good  play ;  at  its  best  it  is  lyrical  rather  than 
dramatic,  and  at  its  worst  it  is  horrible  with  a  vulgar 
material  horror.  The  end  of  "  Titus  Andronicus  "  is  not 
56 


Duse  in  Some  of  Her  Parts. 

so  revolting  as  the  end  of  "  La  Gioconda."  D'Annunzio 
has  put  as  a  motto  on  his  title-page  the  sentence  of  Leon- 
ardo da  Vinci :  "  Cosa  bella  mortal  passa,  e  non  d'arte," 
and  the  action  of  the  play  is  intended  as  a  symbol  of  the 
possessing  and  destroying  mastery  of  art  and  of  beauty. 
But  the  idea  is  materialised  into  a  form  of  grotesque  horror, 
and  all  the  charm  of  the  atmosphere  and  the  grace  of  the 
words  cannot  redeem  a  conclusion  so  inartistic  in  its  pain- 
fulness.  But,  all  the  same,  the  play  is  the  work  of  a  poet, 
it  brings  imagination  upon  the  stage,  and  it  gives  Duse  an 
opportunity  of  being  her  finest  self.  All  the  words  she 
speaks  are  sensitive  words,  she  moves  in  the  midst  of  beau- 
tiful things,  her  whole  life  seems  to  flow  into  a  more 
harmonious  rhythm,  for  all  the  violence  of  its  sorrow  and 
suffering.  Her  acting  at  the  end,  all  through  the  inexcus- 
able brutality  of  the  scene  in  which  she  appears  before  us 
with  her  mutilated  hands  covered  under  long  hanging 
sleeves,  is,  in  the  dignity,  intensity,  and  humanity  of  its 
pathos,  a  thing  of  beauty,  of  a  profound  kind  of  beauty, 
made  up  of  pain,  endurance,  and  the  irony  of  pitiable  things 
done  in  vain.  Here  she  is  no  longer  transforming  a  foreign 
conception  of  character  into  her  own  conception  of  what 
character  should  be  ;  she  is  embodying  the  creation  of  an 
Italian,  of  an  artist,  and  a  creation  made  in  her  honour. 
D'Annunzio's  tragedy  is,  in  the  final  result,  bad  tragedy, 
but  it  is  the  failure  of  a  far  higher  order  than  such  suc- 
cesses as  Mr.  Pinero's.  It  is  written  with  a  consciousness 
of  beauty,  with  a  feverish  energy  which  is  still  energy,  with 
a  sense  of  what  is  imaginative  in  the  facts  of  actual  life. 
It  is  written  in  Italian  which  is  a  continual  delight  to  the 

57 


Duse  in  Some  of  Her  Parts. 

ear,  prose  which  sounds  as  melodious  as  verse,  prose  to 
which,  indeed,  all  dramatic  probability  is  sacrificed.  And 
Duse  seems  to  acquire  a  new  subtlety,  as  she  speaks  at  last 
words  in  themselves  worthy  of  her  speaking.  It  is  as  if  she 
at  last  spoke  her  own  language. 


IV. 

DUMAS  fils  has  put  his  best  work  into  the  novel  of  "  La 
Dame  aux  Camelias,"  which  is  a  kind  of  slighter,  more 
superficial,  more  sentimental,  more  modern,  but  less  universal 
"  Manon  Lescaut."  There  is  a  certain  artificial,  genuinely 
artificial  kind  of  nature  in  it :  if  not  "  true  to  life,"  it  is 
true  to  certain  lives.  But  the  play  lets  go  this  hold,  such 
as  it  is,  on  reality,  and  becomes  a  mere  stage  convention  as 
it  crosses  the  footlights ;  a  convention  which  is  touching, 
indeed,  far  too  full  of  pathos,  human  in  its  exaggerated 
way,  but  no  longer  to  be  mistaken,  by  the  least  sensitive  of 
hearers,  for  great  or  even  fine  literature.  And  the  senti- 
ment in  it  is  not  so  much  human  as  French,  a  factitious 
idealism  in  depravity  which  one  associates  peculiarly  with 
Paris.  Marguerite  Gautier  is  the  type  of  the  nice  woman 
who  sins  and  loves,  and  becomes  regenerated  by  an  un- 
natural kind  of  self-sacrifice,  done  for  French  family  reasons. 
She  is  the  Parisian  whom  Sarah  Bernhardt  impersonates 
perfectly  in  that  hysterical  and  yet  deliberate  manner  which 
is  made  for  such  impersonations.  Duse,  as  she  does  always, 
turns  her  into  quite  another  kind  of  woman ;  not  the  light 
woman,  to  whom  love  has  come  suddenly,  as  a  new  senti- 
ment coming  suddenly  into  her  life,  but  the  simple, 

58 


Duse  in  Some  of  Her  Parts. 

instinctively  loving  woman,  in  whom  we  see  nothing  of  the 
demi-monde,  only  the  natural  woman  in  love.  Throughout 
the  play  she  has  moments,  whole  scenes,  of  absolute  great- 
ness, as  fine  as  anything  she  has  ever  done  :  but  there  are 
other  moments  when  she  seems  to  carry  repression  too  far. 
Her  pathos,  as  in  the  final  scene,  and  at  the  end  of  the  scene 
of  the  reception,  where  she  repeats  the  one  word  "  Armando  " 
over  and  over  again,  in  an  amazed  and  agonising  reproach- 
fulness,  is  of  the  finest  order  of  pathos.  She  appeals  to  us 
by  a  kind  of  goodness,  much  deeper  than  the  sentimental 
goodness  intended  by  Dumas.  It  is  love  itself  that  she 
gives  us,  love  utterly  unconscious  of  anything  but  itself, 
uncontaminated,  unspoilt.  She  is  Mile,  de  Lespinasse 
rather  than  Marguerite  Gautier ;  a  creature  in  whom  ardour 
is  as  simple  as  breath,  and  devotion  a  part  of  ardour.  Her 
physical  suffering  is  scarcely  to  be  noticed  ;  it  is  the  suffering 
of  her  soul  that  Duse  gives  us.  And  she  gives  us  this  as  if 
nature  itself  came  upon  the  boards,  and  spoke  to  us  without 
even  the  ordinary  disguise  of  human  beings  in  their  inter- 
course with  one  another.  Once  more  an  artificial  play 
becomes  sincere ;  once  more  the  personality  of  a  great 
impersonal  artist  dominates  the  poverty  of  her  part ;  we  get 
one  more  revelation  of  a  particular  phase  of  Duse.  And  it 
would  be  unreasonable  to  complain  that  <c  La  Dame  aux 
Camelias  "  is  really  something  quite  different,  something 
much  inferior  ;  here  we  have  at  least  a  great  emotion,  a 
desperate  sincerity,  with  all  the  thoughtfulness  which  can 
possibly  accompany  passion. 


59 


Duse  in  Some  of  Her  Parts, 
v. 

DUMAS,  in  a  preface  better  than  his  play,  tells  us  that 
"  La  Princesse  Georges "  is  "  a  Soul  in  conflict  with  In- 
stincts." But  no,  as  he  has  drawn  her,  as  he  has  placed 
her,  she  is  only  the  theory  of  a  woman  in  conflict  with  the 
mechanical  devices  of  a  plot.  All  these  characters  talk  as 
they  have  been  taught,  and  act  according  to  the  tradition  of 
the  stage.  It  is  a  double  piece  of  mechanism,  that  is  all ; 
there  is  no  creation  of  character,  there  is  a  kind  of  worldly 
wisdom  throughout,  but  not  a  glimmer  of  imagination ; 
argument  drifts  into  sentiment,  and  sentiment  returns  into 
argument,  without  conviction  ;  the  end  is  no  conclusion,  but 
an  arbitrary  break  in  an  action  which  we  see  continuing, 
after  the  curtain  has  fallen.  And,  as  in  "  Fedora,"  Duse 
comes  into  the  play  resolved  to  do  what  the  author  has  not 
done.  Does  she  deliberately  choose  the  plays  most  obviously 
not  written  for  her  in  order  to  extort  a  triumph  out  of  her 
enemies  ?  Once  more  she  acts  consciously,  openly,  making 
every  moment  of  an  unreal  thing  real,  by  concentrating 
herself  upon  every  moment  as  if  it  were  the  only  one.  The 
result  is  a  performance  miraculous  in  detail,  and,  if  detail 
were  everything,  it  would  be  a  great  part.  With  powdered 
hair,  she  is  beautiful  and  a  great  lady  ;  as  the  domesticated 
princess,  she  has  all  the  virtues,  and  honesty  itself,  in  her 
face  and  in  her  movements ;  she  gives  herself  with  a  kind 
of  really  unreflecting  thoughtfulness  to  every  sentiment 
which  is  half  her  emotion.  If  such  a  woman  could  exist, 
and  she  could  not,  she  would  be  that,  precisely  that.  But 
just  as  we  are  beginning  to  believe,  not  only  in  her  but  in 
the  play  itself,  in  comes  the  spying  lady's  maid,  or  the  valet 
60 


Duse  in  Some  of  Her  Parts. 

who  spies  on  the  lady's  maid,  and  we  are  in  melodrama 
again,  and  among  the  strings  of  the  marionettes.  Where 
are  the  three  stages,  truth,  philosophy,  conscience,  which 
Dumas  offers  to  us  in  his  preface  as  the  three  stages  by 
which  a  work  of  dramatic  art  reaches  perfection  ?  Shown 
us  by  Duse,  from  moment  to  moment,  yes ;  but  in  the 
piece,  no,  scarcely  more  than  in  "  Fedora."  So  fatal  is  it 
to  write  for  our  instruction,  as  fatal  as  to  write  for  our 
amusement.  A  work  of  art  must  suggest  everything,  but 
it  must  prove  nothing.  Bad  imaginative  work  like  "  La 
Gioconda  "  is  really,  in  its  way,  better  than  this  unimagina- 
tive and  theoretical  falseness  to  life  ;  for  it  at  least  shows  us 
beauty,  even  though  it  degrades  that  beauty  before  our  eyes. 
And  Duse,  of  all  actresses  the  nearest  to  nature,  was  born 
to  create  beauty,  that  beauty  which  is  the  deepest  truth  of 
natural  things.  Why  does  she  after  all  only  tantalise  us, 
showing  us  little  fragments  of  her  soul  under  many  dis- 
guises, but  never  giving  us  her  whole  self  through  the 
revealing  medium  of  a  masterpiece  ? 


VI. 

"FEDORA"  is  a  play  written  for  Sarah  Bernhardt  by  the 
writer  of  plays  for  Sarah  Bernhardt,  and  it  contains  the 
usual  ingredients  of  that  particular  kind  of  sorcery  :  a 
Russian  tigress,  an  assassination,  a  suicide,  exotic  people 
with  impulses  in  conflict  with  their  intentions,  good  working 
evil  and  evil  working  good,  not  according  to  a  philosophical 
idea,  but  for  the  convenience  of  a  melodramatic  plot.  As 
artificial,  as  far  from  life  on  the  one  hand  and  poetry  on  the 
61 


Duse  in  Some  of  Her  Parts. 

other,  as  a  jig  of  marionettes  at  the  end  of  a  string,  it  has 
the  absorbing  momentary  interest  of  a  problem  in  events. 
Character  does  not  exist,  only  impulse  and  event.  And 
Duse  comes  into  this  play  with  a  desperate  resolve  to  fill  it 
with  honest  emotion,  to  be  what  a  woman  would  really 
perhaps  be  if  life  turned  melodramatic  with  her.  Visibly, 
deliberately,  she  acts ;  "  Fedora  "  is  not  to  be  transformed 
unawares  into  life.  But  her  acting  is  like  that  finest  kind 
of  acting  which  we  meet  with  in  real  life,  when  we  are  able 
to  watch  some  choice  scene  of  the  human  comedy  being 
played  before  us.  She  becomes  the  impossible  thing  that 
Fedora  is,  and,  in  that  tour  de  force,  she  does  some  almost 
impossible  things  by  the  way.  There  is  a  scene  in  which 
the  blood  fades  out  of  her  cheeks  until  they  seem  to  turn  to 
dry  earth  furrowed  with  wrinkles.  She  makes  triumphant 
point  after  triumphant  point  (her  intelligence  being  free  to 
act  consciously  on  this  unintelligent  matter),  and  we  notice, 
more  than  in  her  finer  parts,  individual  moments,  gestures, 
tones  :  the  attitude  of  her  open  hand  upon  a  door,  certain 
blind  caresses  with  her  fingers  as  they  cling  for  the  last  time  to 
her  lover's  cheeks,  her  face  as  she  reads  a  letter,  the  art  of 
her  voice  as  she  almost  deliberately  takes  us  in  with 
these  emotional  artifices  of  Sardou.  When  it  is  all 
over,  and  we  think  of  the  Silvia  of  "La  Gioconda,"  of 
the  woman  we  divine  under  Magda  and  under  Paula 
Tanqueray,  it  is  with  a  certain  sense  of  waste ;  for  even 
Paula  can  be  made  to  seem  something  which  Fedora  can 
never  be  made  to  seem.  In  "  Fedora  "  we  have  a  sheer, 
undisguised  piece  of  stage-craft,  without  even  the  amount 
of  psychological  intention  of  Mr.  Pinero,  much  less  of 
62 


Duse  in  Some  of  Her  Parts. 

Sudermann.  It  is  a  detective  story  with  horrors,  and  it  is 
far  too  positive  and  finished  a  thing  to  be  transformed  into 
something  not  itself.  Sardou  is  a  hard  taskmaster  ;  he  chains 
his  slaves.  Without  nobility  or  even  coherence  of  concep- 
tion, without  inner  life  or  even  a  recognisable  semblance  of 
exterior  life,  the  piece  goes  by  clockwork ;  you  cannot  make 
the  hands  go  faster  or  slower,  or  bring  its  mid-day  into 
agreement  with  the  sun.  A  great  actress,  who  is  also  a 
great  intelligence,  is  seen  accepting  it,  for  its  purpose,  with 
contempt,  as  a  thing  to  exercise  her  technical  skill  upon. 
As  a  piece  of  technical  skill,  Duse's  acting  in  "  Fedora  "  is 
as  fine  as  anything  she  has  done.  It  completes  our  admira- 
tion of  her  genius,  as  it  proves  to  us  that  she  can  act  to 
perfection  a  part  in  which  the  soul  is  left  out  of  the 
question,  in  which  nothing  happens  according  to  nature, 
and  in  which  life  is  figured  as  a  long  attack  of  nerves, 
relieved  by  the  occasional  interval  of  an  uneasy  sleep. 


Pachmann,  "  Parsifal,"  and  the  "  Pathetic 
Symphony." 

THERE  were  no  plays  last  week,  and  I  was  free  to  follow 
my  own  bent,  and  hear  music  instead.  I  went  to  two 
concerts,  both  of  which  interested  me  greatly :  Mr.  Robert 
Newman's  Symphony  Concert  at  the  Queen's  Hall  on  Ash 
Wednesday,  and  the  Saturday  Popular  Concert  at  St.  James's 
Hall.  At  the  former  I  heard  the  Prelude,  the  Good  Friday 
music,  the  Flower  music,  and  the  end  of  the  music  to  the  first 
act  of  "  Parsifal,"  together  with  the  "Pathetic  Symphony" 
of  Tschaikowsky ;  at  the  latter  the  Hess  string  quartet 
played  Brahms  and  Schumann  with  admirable  energy  and 
precision,  Mr.  Plunket  Greene  sang  Bach  and  Brahms  finely, 
and  M.  de  Pachmann  played  on  the  piano  a  Rondo  of 
Mozart,  the  eighth  Nocturne,  and  the  first  Impromptu  of 
Chopin.  I  had  gone  to  this  latter  concert  entirely  to  hear 
Pachmann,  because  it  seems  to  me  that  he  is  the  only  pianist 
who  plays  the  piano  as  it  ought  to  be  played.  I  admit  his 
limitations,  I  admit  that  he  can  only  play  certain  things,  but 
I  contend  that  he  is  the  greatest  living  pianist  because  he 
can  play  those  things  better  than  any  other  pianist  can  play 
anything.  Pachmann  is  the  Verlaine  of  pianists,  and  when 
I  hear  him  I  think  of  Verlaine  reading  his  own  verse,  in  a 
faint,  reluctant  voice,  which  you  overheard.  Other  players 
have  mastered  the  piano,  Pachmann  absorbs  its  soul,  and  it 
is  only  when  he  touches  it  that  it  really  speaks  in  its  own 
voice.  Chopin  wrote  for  the  piano  with  a  more  perfect 
sense  of  his  instrument  than  any  other  composer,  and  Pach- 
64 


"  Parsifal  "  and  the  Pathetic  Symphony. 

mann  plays  Chopin  with  an  infallible  sense  of  what  Chopin 
meant  to  express  in  his  music.  He  seems  to  touch  the 
notes  with  a  kind  of  agony  of  delight ;  his  face  twitches 
with  the  actual  muscular  contraction  of  the  fingers  as  they 
suspend  themselves  in  the  very  act  of  touch.  I  am  told 
that  Pachmann  plays  Chopin  in  a  morbid  way.  Well, 
Chopin  was  morbid ;  there  are  fevers  and  cold  sweats  in  his 
music  ;  it  is  not  healthy  music,  and  it  is  not  to  be  inter- 
preted in  a  robust  way.  It  must  be  played,  as  Pachmann  plays 
it,  somnambulistically,  with  a  tremulous  delicacy  of  intensity, 
as  if  it  were  a  living  thing  on  whose  nerves  one  were 
operating,  and  as  if  every  touch  might  mean  life  or  death. 

When  I  heard  "  Parsifal "  at  Bayreuth  it  seemed  to  me 
that  this,  more  than  any  of  Wagner's  music,  must  lose  in 
being  heard  in  the  concert-hall,  without  its  accompaniment 
of  drama  and  spectacle.  And  I  missed  something,  certainly, 
when  I  heard  those  extracts  from  it  at  the  Queen's  Hall. 
The  music  was  always  beautiful  music;  it  was,  as  good  music 
must  be,  sufficient  to  itself;  but  as  I  listened  to  it  I 
found  myself  unconsciously  remembering  the  stage  at  Bay- 
reuth, and  the  remembrance  helped  me  to  enjoy  it.  When 
I  could  not  remember,  I  enjoyed  it  a  little  less. 

The  music  of  "  Parsifal "  has  the  abstract  quality  of 
Coventry  Patmore's  odes.  I  cannot  think  of  it  except  in 
terms  of  sight.  Light  surges  up  out  of  it,  as  out  of 
unformed  depths  ;  light  descends  from  it,  as  from  the  sky ; 
it  breaks  into  flashes  and  sparkles  of  light,  it  broadens  out 
into  a  vast  sea  of  light.  It  is  almost  metaphysical  music ; 
pure  ideas  take  visible  form,  humanise  themselves  in  a  new 
kind  of  ecstasy.  The  ecstasy  has  still  a  certain  fever  in  it ; 
65 


"  Parsifal  "  and  the  Pathetic  Symphony. 

these  shafts  of  light  sometimes  pierce  the  soul  like  a  sword  ; 
it  is  not  peace,  the  peace  of  Bach,  to  whom  music  can  give 
all  he  wants ;  it  is  the  unsatisfied  desire  of  a  kind  of  flesh 
of  the  spirit,  and  music  is  but  a  voice.  "  Parsifal  "  is  reli- 
gious music,  but  it  is  the  music  of  a  religion  which  had 
never  before  found  expression.  I  have  found  in  a  motet  of 
Vittoria  one  of  the  motives  of  "  Parsifal,"  almost  note  for 
note,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  Wagner  owed  much  to 
Palestrina  and  his  school.  But  even  the  sombre  music  of 
Vittoria  does  not  plead  and  implore  like  Wagner's.  The 
outcry  comes  and  goes,  not  only  with  the  suffering  of 
Amfortas,  the  despair  of  Kundry.  This  abstract  music  has 
human  blood  in  it. 

What  Wagner  has  tried  to  do  is  to  unite  mysticism  and 
the  senses,  to  render  mysticism  through  the  senses.  Mr. 
Wath-Dunton  has  pointed  out  that  that  is  what  Rossetti  tried 
to  do  in  painting.  That  mysterious  intensity  of  expression 
which  we  see  in  the  faces  of  Rossetti's  latest  pictures  has  some- 
thing of  the  same  appeal  as  that  insatiable  crying-out  of  a  carnal 
voice,  somewhere  in  the  depths  of  Wagner's  latest  music. 

In  "  Parsifal,"  more  perhaps  than  anywhere  else  in  his 
work,  Wagner  realised  the  supreme  importance  of  monotony, 
the  effect  that  could  be  gained  by  the  incessant  repetition  of 
a  few  ideas.  All  that  music  of  the  closing  scene  of  Act  I. 
is  made  out  of  two  or  three  phrases,  and  it  is  by  the  finest 
kind  of  invention  that  those  two  or  three  phrases  are 
developed,  and  repeated,  and  woven  together  into  so  splendid 
a  tissue.  And,  in  the  phrases  themselves,  what  severity, 
what  bareness  almost !  It  is  in  their  return  upon  themselves, 
their  weighty  reiterance,  that  their  force  and  significance 
66 


"  Parsifal  "  and  the  Pathetic  Symphony. 

become  revealed ;  and  if,  as  Neitzsche  says,  they  end  by 
hypnotising  us,  well,  all  art  is  a  kind  of  hypnotic  process,  a 
cunning  absorption  of  the  will  of  another. 

To  pass  from  Wagner  to  Tschaikowsky,  from  "  Parsifal  " 
to  the  Pathetic  Symphony,  is  like  passing  from  a  church  in 
which  priests  are  offering  mass  to  a  hut  in  which  peasants 
are  quarrelling,  dancing,  and  making  love.  Tschaikowsky 
has  both  force  and  sincerity,  but  it  is  the  force  and  sincerity 
of  a  ferocious  child.  He  takes  the  orchestra  in  both  hands, 
tears  it  to  pieces,  catches  up  a  fragment  of  it  here,  a  frag- 
ment of  it  there,  masters  it  like  an  enemy ;  he  makes  it  do 
what  he  wants.  But  he  uses  his  fist  where  Wagner  touches 
with  the  tips  of  his  fingers  ;  he  shows  ill-breeding  after  the 
manners  of  the  supreme  gentleman.  Wagner  can  use  the 
whole  strength  of  the  orchestra,  and  not  make  a  noise  :  he 
never  ends  on  a  bang.  But  Tschaikowsky  loves  noise  for 
its  own  sake ;  he  likes  to  pound  the  drum,  and  to  hear  the 
violins  running  up  and  down  scales  like  acrobats.  Wagner 
takes  his  rhythms  from  the  sea,  as  in  "  Tristan,"  from  fire, 
as  in  parts  of  the  "  Ring,"  from  light,  as  in  "  Parsifal."  But 
Tschaikowsky  deforms  the  rhythms  of  nature  with  the 
caprices  of  half-civilised  impulses.  He  puts  the  frog-like 
dancing  of  the  Russian  peasant  into  his  tunes ;  he  cries  and 
roars  like  a  child  in  a  rage.  He  gives  himself  to  you  just 
as  he  is ;  he  is  immensely  conscious  of  himself  and  of  his 
need  to  take  you  into  his  confidence.  In  your  delight  at 
finding  any  one  so  alive,  you  are  inclined  to  welcome  him 
without  reserve,  and  to  forget  that  a  man  of  genius  is  not 
necessarily  a  great  artist,  and  that,  if  he  is  not  a  great  artist, 
he  is  not  a  satisfactory  man  of  genius. 

67 


Pachmann  and  the  Piano. 

WHEN  I  once  wrote  about  Pachmann  that  he  is  the  greatest 
living  pianist,  because  he  can  play  certain  things  better 
than  any  other  pianist  can  play  anything,  I  am  convinced 
that  I  was  strictly  accurate.  I  have  heard  him  again,  at 
St.  James's  Hall,  in  a  recital  of  nothing  but  Chopin  music, 
and  nothing  but  the  best  of  Chopin.  There  was  the 
Funeral  March  Sonata,  the  first  Ballade,  the  Fantasia,  the 
Berceuse,  the  most  beautiful  of  the  Nocturnes  (Op.  37, 
No.  2),  an  exquisite  Valse,  there  were  three  Mazurkas,  three 
Preludes,  and  two  Etudes.  There  were  encores,  interspersed 
with  conversation,  and  there  was  the  horrible  tour  de  force  of 
playing  two  pieces  at  the  same  time.  Chopin's  music,  un- 
like most  other  piano  music,  exists  on  terms  of  perfect 
equality  with  the  piano.  And  Pachmann,  unlike  most  other 
pianists,  exists  on  terms  of  perfect  equality  with  Chopin's 
music.  I  have  heard  pianists  who  played  Chopin  in  what 
they  called  a  healthy  way.  The  notes  swung,  spun,  and 
clattered,  with  a  heroic  repercussion  of  sound,  a  hurrying 
reiteration  of  fury,  signifying  nothing.  The  piano  stormed 
through  the  applause  ;  the  pianist  sat  imperturbably,  hammer- 
ing. Well,  I  do  not  think  any  music  should  be  played  like  that, 
not  Liszt  even.  Liszt  connives  at  the  suicide,  but  with 
Chopin  it  is  a  murder.  When  Pachmann  plays  Chopin  the 
music  sings  itself,  as  if  without  the  intervention  of  an 
executant,  of  one  who  stands  between  the  music  and  our 
hearing.  The  music  has  to  intoxicate  him  before  he  can 
play  with  it ;  then  he  becomes  its  comrade,  in  a  kind  of  very 
serious  game;  himself,  in  short,  that  is  to  say  inhuman.  His 
68 


.• 


Pachmann  and  the  Piano. 

fingers  have  in  them  a  cold  magic,  as  of  soulless  elves  who 
have  sold  their  souls  for  beauty.  And  this  beauty,  which  is 
not  of  the  soul,  is  not  of  the  flesh ;  it  is  a  sea-change,  the 
life  of  the  foam  on  the  edge  of  the  depths.  Or  it  transports 
him  into  some  mid-region  of  the  air,  between  hell  and 
heaven,  where  he  hangs,  listening.  He  listens  at  all  his 
senses.  The  dew,  as  well  as  the  raindrop,  has  a  sound  for 
him. 

Pachmann  gives  you  pure  music,  not  states  of  soul  or  of 
temperament,  not  interpretations,  but  echoes.  He  gives 
you  the  notes  in  their  own  atmosphere,  where  they  live  for 
him  an  individual  life,  which  has  nothing  to  do  with 
emotions  or  ideas.  Thus  he  does  not  need  to  translate  out 
of  two  languages :  first,  from  sound  to  emotion,  tempera- 
ment, what  you  will ;  then  from  that  back  again  to  sound. 
The  notes  exist ;  it  is  enough  that  they  exist.  They  mean 
for  him  just  the  sound  and  nothing  else.  You  see  his  fingers 
feeling  after  it,  his  face  calling  to  it,  his  whole  body  implor- 
ing it.  Sometimes  it  comes  upon  him  in  such  a  burst  of 
light  that  he  has  to  cry  aloud,  in  order  that  he  may  endure 
the  ecstasy.  You  see  him  speaking  to  the  music  ;  he  lifts 
his  finger,  that  you  too  may  listen  for  it  not  less  attentively. 
But  it  is  always  the  thing  itself  that  he  evokes  for  you,  as  it 
rises  flower-like  out  of  silence,  and  comes  to  exist  in  the 
world.  Every  note  lives,  with  the  whole  vitality  of  its 
existence.  To  Swinburne  every  word  lives,  just  in  the  same 
way;  when  he  says  "light,"  he  sees  the  sunrise;  when 
he  says  "  fire,"  he  is  warmed  through  all  his  blood.  And  so 
Pachmann  calls  up,  with  this  ghostly  magic  of  his,  the  inner- 
most life  of  music.  I  do  not  think  he  has  ever  put  an 
69 


Pachmann  and  the  Piano. 

intention  into  Chopin.  Chopin  had  no  intentions.  He  was 
a  man,  and  he  suffered  ;  and  he  was  a  musician,  and  he  wrote 
music  ;  and  very  likely  George  Sand,  and  Majorca,  and  his 
disease,  and  Scotland,  and  the  woman  who  sang  to  him  when 
he  died,  are  all  in  the  music  ;  but  that  is  not  the  question. 
The  notes  sob  and  shiver,  stab  you  like  a  knife,  caress  you 
like  the  fur  of  a  cat ;  and  are  beautiful  sound,  the  most 
beautiful  sound  that  has  been  called  out  of  the  piano. 
Pachmann  calls  it  out  for  you,  disinterestedly,  easily,  with 
ecstasy,  inevitably  ;  you  do  not  realise  that  he  has  had  diffi- 
culties to  conquer,  that  music  is  a  thing  for  acrobats  and 
athletes.  He  smiles  to  you,  that  you  may  realise  how 
beautiful  the  notes  are,  when  they  trickle  out  of  his  fingers 
like  singing  water ;  he  adores  them  and  his  own  playing,  as 
you  do,  and  as  if  he  had  nothing  to  do  with  them  but 
to  pour  them  out  of  his  hands. 

The  art  of  the  pianist,  after  all,  lies  mainly  in  one  thing, 
touch.  It  is  by  the  skill,  precision,  and  beauty  of  his  touch 
that  he  makes  music  at  all ;  it  is  by  the  quality  of  his  touch 
that  he  evokes  a  more  or  less  miraculous  vision  of  sound  for 
us.  Touch  gives  him  his  only  means  of  expression  ;  it  is  to 
him  what  relief  is  to  the  sculptor  or  what  values  are  to  the 
painter.  To  "understand,"  as  it  is  called,  a  piece  of  music,  is 
not  so  much  as  the  beginning  of  good  playing  ;  if  you  do  not 
understand  it  with  your  fingers,  what  shall  your  brain  profit 
you  ?  In  the  interpretation  of  music  all  action  of  the  brain 
which  does  not  translate  itself  perfectly  in  touch  is  useless. 
You  may  as  well  not  think  at  all  as  not  think  in  the  terms 
of  your  instrument,  and  the  piano  responds  to  one  thing 
only,  touch.  Now  Pachmann,  beyond  all  other  pianists,  has 
70 


Pachmann  and  the  Piano. 

this  magic.  When  he  plays  it,  the  piano  ceases  to  be  a 
compromise.  He  makes  it  as  living  and  penetrating  as  the 
violin,  as  responsive  and  elusive  as  the  clavichord. 

And  now,  if  I  am  to  suggest  the  last  shade  of  what  I  want 
to  suggest,  if  I  am  to  evoke  Pachmann  as  I  seem  to  realise 
him,  I  must  be  allowed  to  change  my  medium  of  expression. 
This,  which  may  be  called  "The  Chopin-Player,"  is  an 
attempt  at  a  somewhat  closer  interpretation  than  I  can  give 
in  prose : 

The  sounds  torture  me  :  I  see  them  in  my  brain  ; 
They  spin  a  flickering  web  of  living  threads, 
Like  butterflies  upon  the  garden  beds, 
Nets  of  bright  sound.     I  follow  them  :  in  vain. 
I  must  not  brush  the  least  dust  from  their  wings  : 
They  die  of  a  touch  ;  but  I  must  capture  them, 
Or  they  will  turn  to  a  caressing  flame, 
And  lick  my  soul  up  with  their  flutterings. 

The  sounds  torture  me  :  I  count  them  with  my  eyes, 

I  feel  them  like  a  thirst  between  my  lips  ; 

Is  it  my  body  or  my  soul  that  cries 

With  little  coloured  mouths  of  sound,  and  drips 

In  these  bright  drops  that  turn  to  butterflies 

Dying  delicately  at  my  finger  tips  ? 


Maeterlinck,  "  Everyman  "  and  the 
Japanese  Players. 

I.   "  Pelleas  and  Melisande." 

"  Pelleas  and  Melisande "  is  the  most  beautiful  of 
Maeterlinck's  plays,  and  to  say  this  is  to  say  that  it  is  the 
most  beautiful  contemporary  play.  Maeterlinck's  theatre  of 
marionettes,  who  are  at  the  same  time  children  and  spirits, 
at  once  more  simple  and  more  abstract  than  real  people,  is 
the  reaction  of  the  imagination  against  the  wholly  prose 
theatre  of  Ibsen,  into  which  life  comes  nakedly,  cruelly, 
subtly,  but  without  distinction,  without  poetry.  Maeterlinck 
has  invented  plays  which  are  pictures,  in  which  the  crudity  of 
action  is  subdued  into  misty  outlines.  People  with  strange 
names,  living  in  impossible  places,  where  there  are  only 
woods  and  fountains,  and  towers  by  the  sea-shore,  and 
ancient  castles,  where  there  are  no  towns,  and  where  the 
common  crowd  of  the  world  is  shut  out  of  sight  and 
hearing,  move  like  quiet  ghosts  across  the  stage,  mysterious 
to  us  and  not  less  mysterious  to  one  another.  They  are  all 
lamenting  because  they  do  not  know,  because  they  cannot 
understand,  because  their  own  souls  are  so  strange  to  them, 
and  each  other's  souls  like  pitiful  enemies,  giving  deadly 
wounds  unwillingly.  They  are  always  in  dread,  because 
they  know  that  nothing  is  certain  in  the  world  or  in  their 
own  hearts,  and  they  know  that  love  most  often  does  the 
work  of  hate  and  that  hate  is  sometimes  tenderer  than  love. 
In  "  Pelleas  and  Melisande  "  we  have  two  innocent  lovers, 
to  whom  love  is  guilt ;  we  have  blind  vengeance,  aged  and 
72 


Maeterlinck. 

helpless  wisdom  ;  we  have  the  conflict  of  passions  fighting 
in  the  dark,  destroying  what  they  desire  most  in  the  world. 
And  out  of  this  tragic  tangle  Maeterlinck  has  made  a  play 
which  is  too  full  of  beauty  to  be  painful.  We  feel  an  exqui- 
site sense  of  pity,  so  impersonal  as  to  be  almost  healing, 
as  if  our  own  sympathy  had  somehow  set  right  the  wrongs 
of  the  play. 

And  this  play,  translated  with  delicate  fidelity  by  Mr. 
Mackail,  was  acted  yesterday  afternoon  by  Mrs.  Patrick 
Campbell,  Mr.  Martin  Harvey,  and  others,  to  the  accom- 
paniment of  M.  Faure's  music,  and  in  the  midst  of  scenery 
which  gave  a  series  of  beautiful  pictures,  worthy  of  the 
play.  Mrs.  Campbell,  in  whose  art  there  is  so  much  that  is 
pictorial,  has  never  been  so  pictorial  as  in  the  character  of 
Melisande.  At  the  beginning  I  thought  she  was  acting 
with  more  effort  and  less  effect  than  in  the  original  per- 
formance ;  but  as  the  play  went  on  she  abandoned  herself 
more  and  more  simply  to  the  part  she  was  acting,  and  in  the 
death  scene  had  a  kind  of  quiet,  poignant,  reticent  perfec- 
tion. A  plaintive  figure  out  of  tapestry,  a  child  out  of  a 
nursery  tale,  she  made  one  feel  at  once  the  remoteness  and 
the  humanity  of  this  waif  of  dreams,  the  little  princess  who 
does  know  that  it  is  wrong  to  love.  In  the  great  scene  by 
the  fountain  in  the  park,  Mrs.  Campbell  expressed  the 
supreme  unconsciousness  of  passion,  both  in  face  and  voice, 
as  no  other  English  actress  could  have  done  ;  in  the  death 
scene  she  expressed  the  supreme  unconsciousness  of  innocence 
with  the  same  beauty  and  the  same  intensity.  Her  palpi- 
tating voice,  in  which  there  is  something  like  the  throbbing 
of  a  wounded  bird,  seemed  to  speak  the  simple  and  beautiful 

73 


Maeterlinck. 

words  as  if  they  had  never  been  said  before.  And  that 
beauty  and  strangeness  in  her,  which  make  her  a  work  of 
art  in  herself,  seemed  to  find  the  one  perfect  opportunity 
for  their  expression.  The  only  actress  on  our  stage  whom 
we  go  to  see  as  we  would  go  to  see  a  work  of  art,  she  acts 
Pinero  and  the  rest  as  if  under  a  disguise.  Here,  dressed  in 
wonderful  clothes  of  no  period,  speaking  delicate,  almost 
ghostly  words,  she  is  herself,  her  rarer  self.  And  Mr. 
Martin  Harvey,  who  can  be  so  simple,  so  passionate,  so  full 
of  the  warmth  of  charm,  seemed  until  almost  the  end  of  the 
play  to  have  lost  the  simple  fervour  which  he  had  once 
shown  in  the  part  of  Pell£as  ;  he  posed,  spoke  without 
sincerity,  was  conscious  of  little  but  his  attitudes.  But 
in  the  great  love  scene  by  the  fountain  in  the  park  he  had 
recovered  sincerity,  he  forgot  himself,  remembering  Pelleas  ; 
and  that  great  love  scene  was  acted  with  a  sense  of  the 
poetry  and  a  sense  of  the  human  reality  of  the  thing,  as  no 
one  on  the  London  stage  but  Mr.  Harvey  and  Mrs.  Campbell 
could  have  acted  it.  No  one  else,  except  Mr.  Arliss  as  the  old 
servant,  was  good  ;  the  acting  was  not  sufficiently  monoto- 
nous, with  that  fine  monotony  which  is  part  of  the  secret  of 
Maeterlinck.  These  busy  actors  occupied  themselves  in 
making  points,  instead  of  submitting  passively  to  the  passing 
through  them  of  profound  emotions,  and  the  betrayal  of 
these  emotions  in  a  few,  reticent,  and  almost  unwilling 
words. 

II.   "  Everyman." 

THE  Elizabethan  Stage  Society's  performance  of  "  Every- 
man "  deserves  a  place  of  its  own  among  the  stage 

74 


"  Everyman." 

performances  of  our  time.  "  Everyman "  took  one  into 
a  kind  of  very  human  church,  a  church  in  the  midst  of 
the  market-place,  like  those  churches  in  Italy,  in  which 
people  seem  so  much  at  home.  The  verse  is  quaint,  homely, 
not  so  archaic  when  it  is  spoken  as  one  might  suppose  in 
reading  it ;  the  metre  is  regular  in  beat,  but  very  irregular 
in  the  number  of  syllables,  and  the  people  who  spoke  it  so 
admirably  under  Mr.  Poel's  careful  training  had  not  been 
trained  to  scan  it  as  well  as  they  articulated  it.  "  Every- 
man "  may  be  read,  not  quite  in  its  entirety,  in  Mr.  Pollard's 
collection  of  "  Moralities  and  Miracle  Plays,"  and  I  hope 
this  performance  will  send  readers  to  that  well-packed 
storehouse.  The  piece  is  certainly  the  finest,  simplest, 
gravest  of  all  the  moralities  in  the  book ;  it  is  a  kind  of 
"  Pilgrim's  Progress,"  conceived  with  a  daring  and  reverent 
imagination,  so  that  God  himself  comes  quite  naturally  upon 
the  stage,  and  speaks  out  of  a  clothed  and  painted  image. 
Death,  lean  and  bare-boned,  rattles  his  drum  and  trips 
fantastically  across  the  stage  of  the  earth,  leading  his  dance  ; 
Everyman  is  seen  on  his  way  to  the  grave,  taking  leave  of 
Riches,  Fellowship,  Kindred,  and  Goods  (each  personified 
with  his  attributes),  escorted  a  little  way  by  Strength, 
Discretion,  Beauty,  and  the  Five  Wits,  and  then  abandoned 
by  them,  and  then  going  down  into  the  grave  with  no  other 
attendance  than  that  of  Knowledge  and  Good  Deeds.  The 
pathos  and  sincerity  of  the  little  drama  were  shown  finely 
and  adequately  by  the  simple  cloths  and  bare  boards  of  a 
Shakespearean  stage,  and  by  the  solemn  chanting  of  the 
actors  and  their  serious,  unspoilt  simplicity  in  acting.  Miss 
Wynne-Matthison  in  the  part  of  Everyman  acted  with 

75 


"  Everyman." 

remarkable  power  and  subtlety ;  she  had  the  complete 
command  of  her  voice,  as  so  few  actors  or  actresses  have, 
and  she  was  able  to  give  vocal  expression  to  every  shade 
of  meaning  which  she  had  apprehended. 

III.   The  Japanese  Players. 

WHEN  I  first  saw  the  Japanese  players  I  suddenly  discovered 
the  meaning  of  J  apanese  art,  so  far  as  it  represents  human 
beings.  You  know  the  scarcely  human  oval  which  repre- 
sents a  woman's  face,  with  the  help  of  a  few  thin  curves  for 
eyelids  and  mouth.  Well,  that  convention,  as  I  had  always 
supposed  it  to  be,  that  geometrical  symbol  of  a  face,  turns 
out  to  be  precisely  the  face  of  the  Japanese  woman  when 
she  is  made  up.  So  the  monstrous  entanglements  of  men 
fighting,  which  one  sees  in  the  pictures,  the  circling  of  the 
two-handed  sword,  the  violence  of  feet  in  combat,  are  seen 
to  be  after  all  the  natural  manner  of  Japanese  warfare. 
This  unrestrained  energy  of  body  comes  out  in  the  expres- 
sion of  every  motion.  Men  spit  and  sneeze  and  snuffle, 
without  consciousness  of  dignity  or  hardly  of  humanity, 
under  the  influence  of  fear,  anger  or  astonishment.  When 
the  merchant  is  awaiting  Shylock's  knife  he  trembles  con- 
vulsively, continuously,  from  head  to  feet,  unconscious  of 
everything  but  death.  When  Shylock  has  been  thwarted, 
he  stands  puckering  his  face  into  a  thousand  grimaces,  like 
a  child  who  has  swallowed  medicine.  It  is  the  emotion  of 
children,  naked  sensation,  not  yet  clothed  by  civilisation. 
Only  the  body  speaks  in  it,  the  mind  is  absent ;  and  the 
body  abandons  itself  completely  to  the  animal  force  of  its 
76 


The  Japanese  Players. 

instincts.  With  a  great  artist  like  Sada  Yacco  in  the  death 
scene  of  "  The  Geisha  and  the  Knight,"  the  effect  is  over- 
whelming ;  the  whole  woman  dies  before  one's  sight,  life 
ebbs  visibly  out  of  cheeks  and  eyes  and  lips ;  it  is  death  as 
not  even  Sarah  Bernhardt  has  shown  us  death.  There  are 
moments,  at  other  times  and  with  other  performers,  when 
it  is  difficult  not  to  laugh,  at  some  cat-like  or  ape-like  trick 
of  these  painted  puppets  who  talk  a  toneless  language, 
breathing  through  their  words  as  they  whisper  or  chant 
them.  They  are  swathed  like  barbaric  idols,  in  splendid 
robes  without  grace ;  they  dance  with  fans,  with  fingers, 
running,  hopping,  lifting  their  feet,  if  they  lift  them,  with 
the  heavy  delicacy  of  the  elephant ;  they  sing  in  discords, 
striking  or  plucking  a  few  hoarse  notes  on  stringed  instru- 
ments, and  beating  on  untuned  drums.  Neither  they  nor 
their  clothes  have  beauty,  to  a  Western  taste ;  they  have 
strangeness,  the  charm  of  something  which  seems  to  us 
capricious,  almost  outside  Nature.  In  our  ignorance  of 
their  words,  of  what  they  mean  to  one  another,  of  the  very 
way  in  which  they  see  one  another,  we  shall  best  appreciate 
their  rarity  by  looking  on  them  frankly  as  pictures,  which 
we  can  see  with  all  the  imperfections  of  a  Western  mis- 
understanding. 


77 


Music,  Staging,  and  Some  Acting. 

THE  Purcell  Society  deserves  gratitude  for  giving  us,  at  the 
Great  Queen  Street  Theatre,  Purcell's  "  Masque  of  Love  " 
and  Handel's  "  Acis  and  Galatea."  It  would  have  deserved 
a  less  carefully  limited  gratitude  if  it  had  given  us  the  music 
as  it  was  originally  written,  for  a  thin  orchestra  of  strings 
and  wood-wind,  and  a  harpsichord  filling  up  the  harmonies. 
Mr.  Martin  Shaw  has  done  in  the  case  of  Purcell,  it  is  true, 
only  what  Mozart  did  before  him  in  the  case  of  Handel. 
Well,  no  less  a  poet  than  Dryden  re-wrote  Chaucer,  and  we 
no  longer  read  Dryden's  version.  This  bringing  of  the 
orchestra  up  to  date  is  precisely  the  same  as  the  modernising 
of  Chaucer.  It  may  be  done  as  carefully  as  you  please ; 
something,  colour,  atmosphere,  some  really  interesting 
technical  quality,  is  sure  to  go.  Again,  an  orchestra  only 
half  trained  to  play  together,  and  singers  only  half  trained 
to  keep  with  the  orchestra,  are  not  likely  to  do  full  justice 
to  the  music  which  they  do  their  best  to  interpret. 
But,  after  all,  it  was  not  so  much  for  the  music 
as  for  the  staging  that  I  went  twice  in  the  week  to 
the  Great  Queen  Street  Theatre.  Mr.  Gordon  Craig 
has  already  staged  an  opera  of  Purcell,  the  "  Dido  and 
^Eneas,"  and  he  is  now  presenting  the  "  Masque  of  Love  " 
for  the  second  time.  The  critics,  I  am  told,  have  been 
making  merry  over  this  new  art  which  comes  so  suddenly 
upon  them ;  they  have  complained  that  Handel  did  not 
intend  his  music  to  be  staged  in  a  conventional  manner.  I 
do  not  suppose  Handel  cared  how  his  music  was  staged  ; 
his  music,  certainly,  is  not  heard  to  advantage  on  any  con- 

78 


Music,  Staging,  and  Some  Acting. 

ceivable  kind  of  stage,  because  it  was  written  to  fit  a  cramped 
form,  and  with  only  occasional  suggestions  of  real  dramatic 
feeling.  But  there  is  no  doubt  that  Mr.  Craig's  method  of 
draping  the  stage  with  plain  cloths,  of  lighting  it  from  the 
top,  of  doing  away  with  realistic  imitations  of  scenery,  and 
tailor-made  imitations  of  clothes,  is  a  method  capable  of 
infinite  extension,  capable  already  of  giving  infinite  delight 
to  the  eye.  His  arrangement  of  the  "  Masque  of  Love," 
an  arrangement  at  once  simple  and  fantastic,  always  new 
and  surprising,  has  a  touch  of  genius.  Here  he  comes  into 
competition  with  no  realities,  has  no  author's  intentions  to 
be  uncertain  about,  and  is  therefore  wholly  himself,  and 
wholly  delightful. 

I  was  interested  to  hear  some  of  Handel's  and  of  Purcell's 
music,  so  soon  after  hearing  the  concert  at  the  Queen's  Hall 
on  March  8,  when  Beethoven's  Ninth  Symphony  was  very 
well  and  solidly  rendered  by  Mr.  Wood  (despite  some 
uncertainty  among  the  singers  in  the  quartet),  a  firework 
concerto  of  Saint-Saens'  done  more  than  justice  to  by  Mr. 
Mark  Hambourg,  and  (here  was  the  more  piquant  part  of 
the  contrast)  the  orchestral  fantasia  of  Richard  Strauss, 
"  Don  Juan,"  played  for  only  the  second  time,  I  think,  in 
England.  The  new  problem  in  music,  which  has  only  just 
reached  us  from  Germany,  where  it  has  long  been  discussed 
with  strenuous  seriousnesss,  is  the  problem  of  Richard 
Strauss.  Books  have  been  written  about  him  in  Germany, 
enthusiasts  have  accepted  his  music  as  the  new  music.  I 
had  not  heard  anything  of  his  until  this  performance  of 
"Don  Juan"  at  the  Queen's  Hall.  Mr.  Henry  Wood 
gave  it  admirably  ;  it  interested  me  while  it  was  going  on, 

79 


Music,  Staging,  and  Some  Acting. 

and  yet  I  came  away  puzzled.  It  had  ideas,  and  it  rendered 
sensations.  But  were  those  ideas  very  profound,  very  sincere, 
very  personal  ?  and  were  those  sensations  really  musical 
sensations?  Strauss  gives  a  quotation  from  Lenau  at  the 
beginning  of  his  score,  and  from  this  we  know  that  we 
have  to  expect  two  motives  :  the  motive  of  passion  and  the 
motive  of  loneliness.  Knowing  this,  I  felt  the  passion  and 
the  loneliness  in  the  music.  But  when  I  had  come  away, 
and  all  the  notes  of  the  music  had  evaporated  like 
bubbles,  I  began  to  wonder  whether  I  had  only  felt  them  in 
a  literary  way,  whether  I  had  not  put  them  for  myself  into 
a  certainly  somewhat  formless  mass  which  the  composer 
had  handed  over  to  me,  perhaps  for  my  own  shaping.  The 
music  was  not  a  wholly  new  thing  ;  it  reminded  me  of  both 
Wagner  and  Tschaikowsky  ;  though  it  had  more  of  the 
wind  of  Tschaikowsky  than  of  the  waves  of  Wagner. 
And,  what  was  distressing,  it  reminded  me  sometimes  of 
"L'Enfant  Prodigue,"  of  that  crude  noting  of  sensation, 
one  nervous  thrill  following  another,  in  a  merely  clever 
imitation  of  natural  things.  That  emphatic,  heavy-handed 
way  with  the  orchestra,  was  it  masterly,  or  was  it  the  wrong 
kind  of  emphasis,  the  mere  point  and  pungency  of  antithesis  ? 
I  have  not  yet  quite  made  up  my  mind  ;  I  must  hear  more 
of  Strauss,  if  Mr.  Wood  will  let  me  ;  we  should  certainly 
hear  more  of  Strauss.  Of  one  thing  I  am  certain  :  that  he 
is  not  an  overwhelming  genius.  But  he  is  interesting,  he  is 
worth  the  trouble  of  investigating  ;  he  has  attempted  serious 
work,  and  he  demands  serious  attention,  and,  for  the  time, 
a  suspended  judgment. 

The   one  play   of  the  week  has   been  "  The  Princess's 
80 


Music,  Staging,  and  Some  Acting. 

Nose  "  of  Mr.  Henry  Arthur  Jones,  at  the  Duke  of  York's 
Theatre.  Mr.  Jones  is  an  ambitious  man.  He  once 
observed,  at  the  close  of  an  article  in  the  Nineteenth  Century  .- 
"  O  human  life  !  so  varied,  so  vast,  so  complex,  so  rich  and 
subtle  in  tremulous  deep  organ  tones,  and  soft  proclaim  of 
silver  flutes,  so  utterly  beyond  our  spell  and  insight,  who  of 
us  can  govern  the  thunder  and  whirlwind  of  thy  ventages, 
to  any  utterance  of  harmony,  or  pluck  out  the  heart  of  thy 
eternal  mystery  ?  "  In  other  words,  he  has  thought  about 
life,  and  would  like  to  give  some  representation  of  life  in 
his  plays.  A  distinguished  dramatic  critic,  writing  a  com- 
plimentary preface,  has  said:  "The  claim  of  Mr.  Henry 
Arthur  Jones's  more  ambitious  plays  to  rank  as  literature 
may  have  been  in  some  cases  grudgingly  allowed,  but  has 
not  been  seriously  contested."  In  other  words,  some  people 
have  taken  Mr.  Jones  as  seriously  as  he  takes  himself.  Does 
Mr.  Jones,  I  wonder,  really  hear  any  "  soft  proclaim  of  silver 
flutes,"  or  any  of  the  other  organ  effects  which  he  enume- 
rates, in  "  The  Princess's  Nose  "  ?  Will  any  dramatic  critic 
come  forward  to  assert  that  "  The  Princess's  Nose "  has 
claims  "  to  rank  as  literature "  ?  Who  knows  ?  The 
audience,  for  once,  was  unanimous.  Mr.  Jones  was  not 
encouraged  to  appear.  And  yet  there  had  been  applause,, 
prolonged  applause,  at  many  points  throughout  this  be- 
wildering evening.  The  applause  was  meant  for  the  actors. 
If  Mr.  Jones  had  shown  as  much  tact  in  the  construction 
of  his  play  as  in  the  selection  of  his  cast,  how  admirable 
the  play  would  have  been  !  I  have  rarely  seen  a  play  in 
which  each  actor  seemed  to  fit  into  his  part  with  such  exac- 
titude. Not  only  was  Miss  Irene  Vanbrugh  perfect  as  the 
81  F 


Music,  Staging,  and  Some  Acting. 

Princess,  Miss  Gertrude  Kingston  admirable  as  Mrs.  Malpas, 
and  Mr.  H.  B.  Irving  at  his  best  as  the  Prince,  but  the 
secondary  characters  were  made  the  most  of  by  Mr.  Pawle 
as  Mr.  Malpas,  Mr.  Cosmo  Stuart,  a  finished  study  in  farce, 
as  Mr.  Eglinton-Pyne,  Miss  Carlotta  Addison  as  old  Lady 
Eggerdon,  and  Miss  Ethelwyn  Arthur-Jones,  who  exagge- 
rated in  quite  a  promising  way,  as  Daphne  Langrish.  But 
the  play  !  Well,  the  play  began  as  a  comedy,  continued  as 
a  tragedy,  and  ended  as  a  farce.  It  came  to  a  crisis  every 
five  minutes,  it  suggested  splendid  situations,  and  then 
caricatured  them  unintentionally,  it  went  shilly-shallying 
about  among  the  emotions  and  sensations  which  may  be 
drama  or  melodrama,  whichever  the  handling  makes  them. 
The  much-discussed  name  turns  into  a  piece  of  vulgar  irony  : 
"  You  see  there  is  a  little  poetical  justice  going  about  the 
world,"  says  the  Princess,  when  she  hears  that  her  rival, 
against  whom  she  has  fought  in  vain,  has  been  upset  by 
Providence  in  the  form  of  a  motor-car,  and  the  bridge  of 
her  nose  broken.  Yes,  the  broken  nose  is  Mr.  Jones's 
symbol  for  poetical  justice ;  it  indicates  his  intellectual 
attitude.  There  are  many  parts  of  the  play  where  he  shows, 
as  he  has  so  often  shown,  a  genuine  skill  in  presenting  and 
manipulating  humorous  minor  characters.  As  usual,  they 
have  little  to  do  with  the  play,  but  they  are  amusing  for 
their  moment.  It  is  the  serious  characters  who  will  not  be 
serious.  They  are  meant  well,  the  action  hovers  about 
them  with  little  tempting  solicitations,  continually  offering 
them  an  opportunity  to  be  fine,  to  be  genuine,  and  then 
withdrawing  it  before  is  can  be  grasped.  The  third  act  has 
all  the  material  of  tragedy,  but  the  material  is  wasted ;  only 
82 


Music,  Staging,  and  Some  Acting. 

the  actress  makes  anything  of  it.  We  know  how  Sullivan 
will  take  a  motive  of  mere  farce,  such  words  as  the  "  O 
Captain  Shaw ! "  of  "  lolanthe,"  and  will  write  a  lovely 
melody  to  go  with  it,  fitting  his  music  to  the  feeling  which 
the  words  do  but  caricature.  That  is  how  Miss  Irene 
Vanbrugh  handled  Mr.  Jones's  unshapen  material.  By  the 
earnestness,  sincerity,  sheer  nature,  power,  fire,  dignity,  and 
gaiety  of  her  acting,  she  made  for  us  a  figure  which  Mr. 
Jones  had  not  made.  Mr.  Jones  would  set  his  character  in 
some  impossible  situation,  and  Miss  Vanbrugh  would  make 
us,  for  the  moment,  forget  its  impossibility.  He  would 
give  her  a  trivial  or  a  grotesque  or  a  vulgar  action  to  do, 
and  she  would  do  it  with  distinction.  She  had  force  in 
lightness,  a  vivid  malice,  a  magnetic  cheerfulness ;  and  she 
could  suffer  silently,  and  be  sincere  in  a  tragedy  which 
had  been  conceived  without  sincerity.  If  acting  could  save 
a  play,  <{  The  Princess's  Nose  "  would  have  been  saved.  It 
was  not  saved. 


The  Test  of  the  Actor. 

THE  interest  of  bad  plays  lies  in  the  test  which  they  afford 
of  the  capability  of  actors.     As  we  have  just  seen,  in  the 
case  of  Mr.  Jones  and  his  company,  the  actors  cannot  save  a 
play  which  insists  on  defeating  them  at  every  turn.     But,  as 
we  may  realise  any  day  when  Sarah  Bernhardt  acts  before  us, 
there  is  a  certain  kind  of  frankly  melodramatic  play  which 
can    be    lifted  into  at  all  events  a  region  of   excited  and 
gratified   nerves.     I  have  lately  been  to  see  a   melodrama, 
called  "The  Heel  of  Achilles,"  which  Miss  Julia  Neilson 
has  been  giving  at  the  Globe  Theatre.     The  play  is  meant 
to  tear  at  one's  susceptibilities,  much  as  "La  Tosca"  tears 
at  them.     "  La  Tosca  "  is  not  a  fine  play  in  itself,  though  it 
is    a   much    better   play    than  "The    Heel    of  Achilles.'* 
But  it  is  the  vivid,  sensational  acting  of  Sarah  Bernhardt 
which  gives  one  all  the  shudders.     "  The  Heel  of  Achilles  " 
did  not  give  me  a  single  shudder,  not  because  it  was  not 
packed  with  the  raw  material  of  sensation,  but  because  Miss 
Julia  Neilson  went  through  so  many  trying  experiences  with 
nerves  of  marble. 

I  cannot  help  wondering  at  the  curious  lack  of  self- 
knowledge  in  actors.  Here  is  a  play,  which  depends  for  a 
great  deal  of  its  effect  on  a  scene  in  which  Lady  Leslie,  a 
young  Englishwoman  in  Russia,  promises  to  marry  a  Russian 
prince  whom  she  hates,  in  order  to  save  her  betrothed  lover 
from  being  sent  to  Siberia.  The  lover  is  shut  in  between 
two  doors,  unable  to  get  out ;  he  is  the  bearer  of  a  State 
secret,  and  everything  depends  on  his  being  able  to  catch 
the  eleven  P.M.  train  for  Berlin.  The  Russian  prince  stands 
84 


The  Test  of  the  Actor. 

before  the  young  Englishwoman,  offering  her  the  key  of 
the  door,  the  safety  of  her  lover,  and  his  own  hand  in 
marriage.  Now,  she  has  to  express  by  her  face  and  her 
movements  all  the  feelings  of  astonishment,  horror,  suspense, 
love,  hatred,  distraction,  which  such  a  situation  would  call 
up  in  her.  If  she  does  not  express  them  the  scene  goes  for 
nothing.  The  actress  stakes  all  on  this  scene. 

Now,  is  it  possible  that  Miss  Julia  Neilson  really  imagined 
herself  to  be  capable  of  rendering  this  scene  as  it  should  be 
rendered  ?  It  is  a  scene  that  requires  no  brains,  no  subtle 
emotional  quality,  none  of  the  more  intellectual  merits  of 
acting.  It  requires  simply  a  great  passivity  to  feeling,  the 
mere  skill  of  letting  horrors  sweep  over  the  face  and  the 
body  like  drenching  waves.  The  actress  need  not  know 
how  she  does  it ;  she  may  do  it  without  an  effort,  or  she 
may  obtain  her  spontaneity  by  an  elaborate  calculation. 
But  to  do  it  at  all  she  must  be  the  actress  in  every  fibre  of 
her  body  ;  she  must  be  able  to  vibrate  freely.  If  the 
emotion  does  not  seize  her  in  its  own  grasp,  and  then  seize  us 
through  her,  it  will  all  go  for  nothing.  Well,  Miss  Neilson 
sat,  and  walked,  and  started,  and  became  rigid,  and  glanced 
at  the  clock,  and  knelt,  and  fell  against  the  wall,  and  cast 
her  eyes  about,  and  threw  her  arms  out,  and  made  her  voice 
husky  ;  and  it  all  went  for  nothing.  Never  for  an  instant 
did  she  suggest  what  she  was  trying  to  suggest,  and  after 
the  first  moment  of  disappointment  the  mind  was  left  calmly 
free  to  watch  her  attempt  as  if  it  were  speculating  round  a 
problem. 

How  many  English  actresses,  I  wonder,  would  have  been 
capable  of  dealing  adequately  with  such  a  scene  as  that  ?  I 


The  Test  of  the  Actor. 

take  it,  not  because  it  is  a  good  scene,  but  because  it  affords 
so  rudimentary  a  test  of  the  capacity  for  acting.  The  test 
of  the  capacity  for  acting  begins  where  words  end  ;  it  is 
independent  of  words ;  you  may  take  poor  words  as  well 
as  fine  words ;  it  is  all  the  same.  The  embodying 
power,  the  power  to  throw  open  one's  whole  nature  to  an 
overcoming  sensation,  the  power  to  render  this  sensation  in 
so  inevitable  a  way  that  others  shall  feel  it :  that  is  the  one 
thing  needful.  It  is  not  art,  it  is  not  even  the  beginning 
of  art ;  but  it  is  the  foundation  on  which  alone  art  can  be 
built. 

The  other  day,  in  "  Ulysses,"  there  was  only  one  piece  of 
acting  that  was  quite  convincing  :  the  acting  of  Mr.  Brough 
as  the  Swineherd.  It  is  a  small  part  and  an  easy  part,  but 
it  was  perfectly  done.  Almost  any  other  part  would  have 
been  more  striking  and  surprising  if  it  had  been  done  as 
perfectly,  but  no  other  part  was  done  as  perfectly.  Mr. 
Brough  has  developed  a  stage-personality  of  his  own,  with 
only  a  limited  range  of  emotion,  but  he  has  developed  it 
until  it  has  become  a  second  nature  with  him.  He  has  only 
to  speak,  and  he  may  say  what  he  likes  ;  we  accept  him  after 
the  first  word,  and  he  remains  what  that  first  word  has  shown 
him  to  be.  Mr.  Tree,  with  his  many  gifts,  his  effective 
talents,  all  his  taste,  ambition,  versatility,  never  produces  just 
that  effect  :  he  remains  interestingly  aside  from  what  he  is 
doing ;  you  see  his  brain  working  upon  it,  you  enjoy  his  by- 
play ;  his  gait,  his  studied  gestures,  absorb  you ;  "  How 
well  this  is  done  !  "  you  say,  and  "  How  well  that  is  done  !  " 
and,  indeed,  you  get  a  complete  picture  out  of  his  repre- 
sentation of  the  part :  a  picture,  not  a  man. 
S6 


The  Test  of  the  Actor. 

I  am  not  sure  that  melodrama  is  not  the  hardest  test  of 
the  actor  :  it  is,  at  least,  the  surest.  All  the  human  emotions 
throng  noisily  together  in  the  making  of  melodrama :  they 
are  left  there,  in  their  naked  muddle,  and  they  come  to  no 
good  end ;  but  there  they  are.  To  represent  any  primary 
emotion,  and  to  be  ineffective,  is  to  fail  in  the  fundamental 
thing.  All  actors  should  be  sent  to  school  in  melodrama., 
as  all  dramatic  authors  should  learn  their  trade  there. 


Tolstoi  and  the  Others. 

THERE  is  little  material  for  the  stage  in  the  novels  of 
Tolstoi.  Those  novels  are  full,  it  is  true,  of  drama ;  but 
they  cannot  be  condensed  into  dramas.  The  method  of 
Tolstoi  is  slow,  deliberate,  significantly  unemphatic ;  he 
works  by  adding  detail  to  detail,  as  a  certain  kind  of 
painter  adds  touch  to  touch.  The  result  is,  in  a  sense, 
monotonous,  and  it  is  meant  to  be  monotonous.  Tolstoi 
endeavours  to  give  us  something  more  nearly  resembling 
daily  life  than  any  one  has  yet  given  us ;  and  in  daily  life 
the  moment  of  spiritual  crisis  is  rarely  the  moment  in 
which  external  action  takes  place.  In  the  drama  we  can 
only  properly  realise  the  soul's  action  through  some  corres- 
ponding or  consequent  action  which  takes  place  visibly 
before  us.  You  will  find,  throughout  Tolstoi's  work,  many 
striking  single  scenes,  but  never,  I  think,  a  scene  which  can 
bear  detachment  from  that  network  of  detail  which  has  led 
up  to  it  and  which  is  to  come  out  of  it.  Often  the  scene 
which  most  profoundly  impresses  one  is  a  scene  trifling  in 
itself,  and  owing  its  impressive  ness  partly  to  that  very 
quality.  Take,  for  instance,  in  "  Resurrection,"  Book  II. 
ch.  xxviii.,  the  scene  in  the  theatre  "  during  the  second  act 
of  the  eternal  *  Dame  aux  Camelias,'  in  which  a  foreign 
actress  once  again,  and  in  a  novel  manner,  showed  how 
women  died  of  consumption."  The  General's  wife,  Mariette, 
smiles  at  Nekhludoff  in  the  box,  and,  outside,  in  the  street, 
another  woman,  the  other  "  half-world,"  smiles  at  him, 
just  in  the  same  way.  That  is  all,  but  to  Nekhludoff  it  is 
one  of  the  great  crises  of  his  life.  He  has  seen  something, 
38 


Tolstoi  and  the  Others. 

for  the  first  time,  in  what  he  now  feels  to  be  its  true  light, 
and  he  sees  it  "as  clearly  as  he  saw  the  palace,  the  sentinels, 
the  fortress,  the  river,  the  boats  and  the  Stock  Exchange.  And 
just  as  on  this  northern  summer  night  there  was  no  restful 
darkness  on  the  earth,  but  only  a  dismal,  dull  light  coming 
from  an  invisible  source,  so  in  Nekhludoff's  soul  there  was 
no  longer  the  restful  darkness,  ignorance."  The  chapter  is 
profoundly  impressive ;  it  is  one  of  those  chapters  which  no 
one  but  Tolstoi  has  ever  written.  Imagine  it  transposed  to 
the  stage,  if  that  were  possible,  and  the  inevitable  disappear- 
ance of  everything  that  gives  it  meaning  ! 

In  Tolstoi  the  story  never  exists  for  its  own  sake,  but  for 
the  sake  of  a  very  definite  moral  idea.  Even  in  his  later 
novels  Tolstoi  is  not  a  preacher  ;  he  gives  us  an  interpreta- 
tion of  life,  not  a  theorising  about  life.  But,  to  him,  the 
moral  idea  is  almost  everything,  and  (what  is  of  more  con- 
sequence) it  gives  a  great  part  of  its  value  to  his  "  realism  " 
of  prisons  and  brothels  and  police  courts.  In  all  forms  of 
art,  the  point  of  view  is  of  more  importance  than  the  subject- 
matter.  It  is  as  essential  for  the  novelist  to  get  the  right 
focus  as  it  is  for  the  painter.  In  a  page  of  Zola  and  in  a 
page  of  Tolstoi  you  might  find  the  same  gutter  described 
with  the  same  minuteness ;  and  yet  in  reading  the  one  you 
might  see  only  the  filth,  while  in  reading  the  other  you 
might  feel  only  some  fine  human  impulse.  Tolstoi  "  sees 
life  steadily "  because  he  sees  it  under  a  divine  light ;  he 
has  a  saintly  patience  with  evil,  and  so  becomes  a  casuist 
through  sympathy,  a  psychologist  out  of  that  pity  which  is 
understanding.  And  then,  it  is  as  a  direct  consequence  of 
this  point  of  view,  in  the  mere  process  of  unravelling 
89 


Tolstoi  and  the  Others. 

things,  that  his  greatest  skill  is  shown  as  a  novelist.  He 
does  not  exactly  write  well ;  he  is  satisfied  if  his  words 
express  their  meaning,  and  no  more ;  his  words  have  neither 
beauty  nor  subtlety  in  themselves.  But,  if  you  will  only 
give  him  time,  for  he  needs  time,  he  will  creep  closer  and 
closer  up  to  some  doubtful  and  remote  truth,  not  knowing 
itself  for  what  it  is :  he  will  reveal  the  soul  to  itself,  like 
"  God's  spy." 

If  you  want  to  know  how  daily  life  goes  on  among 
people  who  know  as  little  about  themselves  as  you  know 
about  your  neighbours  in  a  street  or  drawing-room,  read 
Jane  Austen,  and,  on  that  level,  you  will  be  perfectly  satisfied. 
But  if  you  want  to  know  why  these  people  are  happy  or 
unhappy,  why  the  thing  which  they  do  deliberately  is  not 
the  thing  which  they  either  want  or  ought  to  do,  read 
Tolstoi  ;  and  I  can  hardly  add  that  you  will  be  satisfied. 
I  never  read  Tolstoi  without  a  certain  suspense,  sometimes 
a  certain  terror.  An  accusing  spirit  seems  to  peer  between 
every  line ;  I  can  never  tell  what  new  disease  of  the  soul 
those  pitying  and  unswerving  eyes  may  not  have  dis- 
covered. 

Such,  then,  is  a  novel  of  Tolstoi ;  such,  more  than  almost 
any  of  his  novels,  is  "  Resurrection,"  the  masterpiece  of  his 
old  age,  into  which  he  has  put  an  art  but  little  less  consum- 
mate than  that  of  "  Anna  Karenina,"  together  with  the 
finer  spirit  of  his  later  gospel.  Out  of  this  novel  a  play 
in  French  was  put  together  by  M.  Henry  Bataille  and  pro- 
duced at  the  Odeon  on  November  14  of  last  year.  A  play 
in  English,  said  to  be  by  MM.  Henry  Bataille  and 
Michael  Morton,  has  been  produced  this  week  by  Mr.  Tree 
90 


Tolstoi  and  the  Others. 

at  Her  Majesty's  Theatre ;  and  the  play  is  called,  as  the 
French  play  was  called,  Tolstoi's  "  Resurrection."  I  do  not 
know  if  Mr.  Morton  has  translated  M.  Bataille,  or  merely 
adapted  him.  I  have  read  in  a  capable  French  paper  that 
"  Ton  est  heureux  d'avoir  pu  applaudir  une  oeuvre  vraiment 
noble,  vraiment  pure,"  in  the  play  of  M.  Bataille.  Are 
those  quite  the  words  one  would  use  about  the  play  in 
English  ? 

They  are  not  quite  the  words  I  would  use  about  the  play 
in  English.  It  is  a  melodrama  with  one  good  scene,  the 
scene  in  the  prison ;  and  this  is  good  only  to  a  certain 
point.  There  is  another  scene  which  is  amusing,  the  scene 
of  the  jury,  but  the  humour  is  little  more  than  clowning, 
and  the  tragic  note,  which  should  strike  through  it,  is  only 
there  in  a  parody  of  itself.  Indeed  the  word  parody  is  the 
only  word  which  can  be  used  about  the  greater  part  of  the 
play,  and  it  seems  to  me  a  pity  that  the  name  of  Tolstoi 
should  be  brought  into  such  dangerous  companionship  with 
the  vulgarities  and  sentimentalities  of  the  London  stage.  I 
heard  people  around  me  confessing  that  they  had  not  read 
the  book.  How  terrible  must  have  been  the  disillusion  of 
those  people,  if  they  had  ever  expected  anything  of  Tolstoi, 
and  if  they  really  believed  that  this  demagogue  Prince,  who 
stands  in  nice  poses  in  the  middle  of  drawing-rooms  and  of 
prison  cells,  talking  nonsense  with  a  convincing  disbelief, 
was  in  any  sense  a  mouthpiece  for  Tolstoi's  poor  simple 
little  gospel.  Tolstoi  according  to  Captain  Marshall,  I 
should  be  inclined  to  define  him  ;  but  I  must  give  Mr. 
Tree  his  full  credit  in  the  matter.  When  he  crucifies  him- 
self, so  to  speak,  symbolically,  across  the  door  of  the  jury- 

91 


Tolstoi  and  the  Others. 

room,  remarking  in  his  slowest  manner  :  "  The  bird  flutters 
no  longer  ;  I  must  atone,  I  must  atone ! "  one  is,  in  every 
sense,  alone  with  the  actor.  Mr.  Tree  has  many  arts,  but 
he  has  not  the  art  of  sincerity.  His  conception  of  acting 
is,  literally,  to  act,  on  every  occasion.  Even  in  the  prison 
scene,  in  which  Miss  Ashwell  is  so  good,  until  she  begins 
to  shout  and  he  to  rant,  "  and  then  the  care  is  over,"  Mr. 
Tree  cannot  be  his  part  without  acting  it. 

That  prison-scene  is,  on  the  whole,  well  done,  and  the 
first  part  of  it,  when  the  women  shout  and  drink  and 
quarrel,  is  acted  with  a  satisfying  sense  of  vulgarity  which 
contrasts  singularly  with  what  is  meant  to  be  a  suggestion 
of  the  manners  of  society  in  St.  Petersburg  in  the  scene  pre- 
ceding. Perhaps  the  most  lamentable  thing  in  the  play  is 
the  first  act.  This  act  takes  the  place  of  those  astounding 
chapters  in  the  novel  in  which  the  seduction  of  Katusha  is 
described  with  a  truth,  tact,  frankness,  and  subtlety,  un- 
paralleled in  any  novel  I  have  ever  read.  I  read  them  over 
before  I  went  to  the  theatre,  and  when  I  got  to  the  theatre 
I  found  a  scene  before  me  which  was  not  Tolstoi's  scene,  a 
foolish,  sentimental  conversation  in  which  I  recognised 
hardly  more  than  one  sentence  of  Tolstoi  (and  this  brought 
in  in  the  wrong  place),  and,  in  short,  the  old  make-believe 
of  all  the  hack-writers  for  the  stage,  dished  up  again,  and 
put  before  us,  with  a  simplicity  of  audacity  at  which  one  can 
only  marvel  ("  a  thing  imagination  boggles  at ")  as  an 
"  adaptation  "  from  Tolstoi.  Tolstoi  has  been  hardly  treated 
by  some  translators  and  by  many  critics  ;  in  his  own  country, 
if  you  mention  his  name,  you  are  as  likely  as  not  to  be  met 
by  a  shrug  and  an  "Ah,  monsieur,  il  divague  un  peu  ! "  In 
92 


Tolstoi  and  the  Others. 

his  own  country  he  has  the  censor  always  against  him  ;  some 
of  his  books  he  has  never  been  able  to  print  in  full  in 
Russian.  But  in  the  new  play  at  His  Majesty's  Theatre 
we  have,  in  what  is  boldly  called  Tolstoi's  "  Resurrec- 
tion," something  which  is  not  Tolstoi  at  all.  There  is 
M.  Bataille,  who  might  take  the  responsibility  of  it,  or  there 
is  Mr.  Morton,  who  may  have  done  more  than  merely  trans- 
late M.  Bataille,  or  there  is  Mr.  Tree,  who  may  have  exercised 
the  supervision  of  an  actor-manager  ;  but  Tolstoi,  might  not 
the  great  name  of  Tolstoi  be  left  well  alone  ? 


93 


Literary  Drama. 

ON  the  first  night  of  Mr.  Anthony  Hope's  new  comedy  at 
the  Garrick  Theatre,  a  critic,  who  is  himself  a  man  of 
letters,  surprised  me  by  saying  that,  though  the  play  was 
not  dramatic,  it  was  still  literary.  He  meant  it  to  be,  in  its 
way,  a  compliment,  though  he  discriminated  by  saying,  as 
a  higher  compliment,  that  Ibsen  was  not  literary.  I  have 
never  been  able  to  see  that  any  written  work  can  be,  in  a 
true  sense,  literature,  if  it  does  not  precisely  answer  the 
purpose  of  its  existence.  Now,  a  play  is  written  to  be  acted, 
and  it  will  not  be  literature  merely  because  its  sentences  are 
nicely  written.  It  will  be  literature,  dramatic  literature,  if, 
in  addition  to  being  nicely  written,  it  has  the  qualities 
which  make  a  stage-play  a  good  stage-play.  Ibsen's  plays 
are  in  the  best  sense  of  the  word  literary,  because  they 
express  their  ideas  through  a  perfectly  successful  use  of 
the  conditions  of  the  stage,  because  they  deal  profoundly 
with  life  through  the  medium  which  they  have  chosen  for 
expression. 

I  allow  to  Mr.  Anthony  Hope's  comedy  all  kinds  of 
negative  merits,  and  a  few  slight  merits  of  a  positive  kind. 
It  is  not,  sentence  by  sentence,  badly  written ;  the  sentences 
are  neatly  turned,  with  a  neatness  which  Mr.  Pinero,  for 
instance,  has  never  acquired.  It  is  not  without  ideas  ;  and 
the  ideas,  so  far  as  they  go,  have  a  certain  acuteness.  It  is 
entirely  without  vulgarity,  or  any  kind  of  bad  form.  In  the 
last  act  it  moves  swiftly,  becomes  really  amusing,  suggests 
an  ironical  outlook  on  things.  But  think  for  an  instant  of 
a  play  like  "  The  Importance  of  Being  Earnest,"  which  has 

94 


Literary  Drama. 

been  revived  with  such  an  instant  and  inevitable  success 
at  the  St.  James's.  Oscar  Wilde  was  a  philosopher  in 
masquerade,  and  he  had  perfected  one  art  :  the  art  of 
the  stage.  It  is  not  because  every  sentence  is  amusing 
in  itself  that  people  go  to  see  his  comedies  ;  it  is  because  the 
"  fundamental  brain-work  "  of  his  comedies  is  adequate ; 
it  is  because  they  do  exactly  what  they  aim  at  doing.  There 
is  the  genuine  literary  faculty,  making  drama  :  how  different 
a  thing  from  the  amusing  and  correctly-expressed  by-play 
of  such  stage  trifles  as  "  Pilkerton's  Peerage,"  which  we 
are  all  so  ready  to  call  literary  merely  because  they  are 
not  illiterate  ! 

But  it  is,  after  all,  in  the  other  play  of  the  week  that  the 
question  of  literary  drama  presents  itself  most  significantly. 
Mr.  Tree's  production  of  Mr.  Stephen  Phillips's  "Ulysses," 
at  His  Majesty's  Theatre,  is  full  of  interest  for  all  to  whom 
the  poetic  drama  is  of  interest.  The  play  was  sumptuously 
staged,  capably  acted,  the  verse  was  spoken  with  care,  and, 
if  it  was  drawled  a  little  beyond  measure,  that  is  a  fault  far 
more  pardonable  than  the  customary  prose  gabble.  Mr. 
Phillips,  as  we  know,  is  a  writer  of  careful  and  often  felicitous 
verse  ;  he  has  a  temperate  charm,  a  graceful  sense  of  epithet, 
a  genuine  poetic  feeling  ;  and  he  has  a  firm  hold  on  his 
material :  he  can  make  his  poetry  hold  the  stage.  Here,  it 
might  seem,  is  the  true  literary  drama,  drama  and  literature 
at  once.  There  is  an  action  that  moves  ;  there  are  plausible 
characters,  who  speak  in  clear  and  elegant  verse.  What 
more  do  we  want  ? 

We  want  something  more,  and,  if  we  are  to  have  great 
poetic  drama,  we  must  have  this  something  more.  Poetry 

95 


Literary  Drama. 

is  one  thing,  stagecraft  is  another ;  and  there  are  different 
kinds  of  poetry  as  there  are  different  kinds  of  stagecraft. 
The  action  of  "  Ulysses  "  is  theatrical,  the  language  is 
idyllic.  The  two  tendencies  struggle  throughout  the  play, 
the  action  breaking  away  from  the  words  wherever  the  words 
are  fine,  and  the  words  stopping  the  action  to  give  utterance 
to  a  recitation.  Here  and  there  a  fine  line  corresponds 
with  a  fine  dramatic  moment,  as  when  Telemachus,  urged 
by  Athene  to  rise  up  against  the  Suitors,  his  enemies,  and 
answering :  "  Goddess,  I  am  but  one,  and  they  are  many," 
is  answered  by  Athene :  "  Thou  art  innumerable  as  thy 
wrongs."  But  take  the  end  of  the  second  act,  the  escape 
from  Hades,  and  see  how  that  opportunity  for  fine  dramatic 
poetry  is  wasted  in  theatrical  shrieks:  "I  come — I  come — 
I  stagger  up  to  thee,"  and  the  like ;  in  descriptive  asides  : 
f<  O  whirling  dead  !  And  a  great  swirl  of  souls,"  and  the 
like ;  and  in  mere  squabbles  with  ghosts,  who  "  circle  over 
Ulysses  with  cries,  obscuring  him."  Again,  the  one  great 
emotional  opportunity  in  the  play,  the  one  great  opportunity 
for  passion,  the  scene  on  the  island  of  Ogygia  between 
Ulysses  and  Calypso,  has  many  touches  of  meditative  pretti- 
ness,  but  not  a  single  note  of  passion.  Throughout,  every 
character  speaks  as  he  is  told,  and  he  speaks  as  Mr.  Phillips 
speaks,  in  narrative  or  idyllic  verse.  The  poetry  might  be 
detached  from  the  dramatic  framework  and  the  framework 
would  stand  exactly  as  it  did  before.  Now,  true  dramatic 
poetry  is  an  integral  part  of  the  dramatic  framework,  which, 
indeed,  at  its  best,  it  makes.  "  Ulysses "  is  a  spectacle- 
drama,  with  a  commentary  in  verse.  At  its  best  it  reaches 
only  what  Coleridge,  contrasting  Schiller  with  Shakespeare, 
96 


Literary  Drama. 

called  "  the  material  sublime."  It  has  not  flowered  up  out 
of  a  seed  of  hidden  beauty  ;  such  beauty  as  it  has,  and  it  has 
beauty,  is  wrought  from  without,  and  presents  itself  to  us  as 
decoration. 

Mr.  Phillips  is  at  his  best  when  dealing  with  Greek 
subjects  ;  he  loves  clear  outline,  simplicity  of  action.  But 
his  Ulysses  is  not  a  Greek  of  the  heroic  age  ;  he  is,  as 
Dr.  Todhunter,  speaking  of  Mr.  Phillips,  acutely  says 
in  the  Fortnightly  Review,  "  classical  in  the  decorative 
sense  in  which  Lord  Leighton's  work  was  classical."  He 
goes  through  many  adventures  successfully,  commenting  on 
them  by  the  way.  Athene  praises  him  for  his  craft,  but  he 
is  without  that  wisdom  which,  in  the  Greek  conception  of 
prudence,  went  hand  in  hand  with  craft.  Contrast  him,  I 
will  not  say  with  Homer,  but  with  the  lofty  poetry  of  Mr. 
Bridges,  the  grave  and  strenuous  poetry  of  Tennyson.  He 
is  a  well-constructed  figure  of  a  man  ;  but  prick  him,  and 
the  sawdust  would  run  out. 

The  poetic  drama,  if  it  is  to  become  a  genuine  thing, 
must  be  conceived  as  drama,  and  must  hold  us,  as  a 
play  of  Ibsen's  holds  us,  by  the  sheer  interest  of  its  repre- 
sentation of  life.  It  must  live,  and  it  must  live  in  poetry, 
as  in  its  natural  atmosphere.  The  verse  must  speak  as 
straight  as  prose,  but  with  a  more  beautiful  voice.  It 
must  avoid  rhetoric  as  scrupulously  as  Ibsen  avoids 
rhetoric.  It  must  not  "  make  poetry,"  however  good 
in  its  way.  Here,  for  instance,  is  one  of  the  most  effec- 
tive speeches  in  "  Ulysses,"  for  effective  it  certainly  was, 
just  as  the  Italian  aria  was  effective  in  the  opera  which  it 
interrupted  : 

97  G 


Literary  Drama. 

Then  have  the  truth  ;  I  speak  as  a  man  speaks  ; 
Pour  out  my  heart  like  treasure  at  your  feet. 
This  odorous  amorous  isle  of  violets, 
That  leans  all  leaves  into  the  glassy  deep, 
With  brooding  music  over  noontide  moss, 
And  low  dirge  of  the  lily-swinging  bee, — 
Then  stars  like  opening  eyes  on  closing  flowers, — 
Palls  on  my  heart.     Ah  God  !   that  I  might  see 
Gaunt  Ithaca  stand  up  out  of  the  surge, 
Yon  lashed  and  streaming  rocks,  and  sobbing  crags, 
The  screaming  gull  and  the  wild-flying  cloud  : — 
To  see  far  off  the  smoke  of  my  own  hearth, 
To  smell  far  out  the  glebe  of  my  own  farms, 
To  spring  alive  upon  her  precipices, 
And  hurl  the  singing  spear  into  the  air ; 
To  scoop  the  mountain  torrent  in  my  hand, 
And  plunge  into  the  midnight  of  her  pines ; 
To  look  into  the  eyes  of  her  who  bore  me, 
And  clasp  his  knees  who  'gat  me  in  his  joy, 
Prove  if  my  son  be  like  my  dream  of  him. 

Some  of  that  is  good  descriptive  verse,  but  it  is  all 
declamation,  none  of  it  is  speech.  Now,  between  declama- 
tion and  dramatic  poetry  there  is  a  great  gulf.  The  actor 
loves  declamation,  because  it  gives  him  an  opportunity  to 
recite,  and  every  actor  loves  to  recite  poetry.  It  provides 
him  with  a  pulpit.  He  does  not  like  to  realise,  any  more 
than  his  author  likes  to  realise,  that  every  line  of  poetry 
which  is  not  speech  is  bad  dramatic  poetry. 


98 


Mr.  Stephen  Phillips  and  a  Lecture. 

IN  the  afternoon  I  went  to  the  Coronet  Theatre  to  hear 
M.  Gustave  Larroumet  lecture  on  the  modern  French 
drama.  M.  Larroumet  is  that  curious  type,  unknown  over 
here,  the  professor  as  dramatic  critic.  He  lectures  at  the 
Sorbonne,  he  is  a  member  of  the  Institut,  he  is  Perpetual 
Secretary  of  the  Acad£mie  des  Beaux-Arts,  and  he  is  also 
the  dramatic  critic  of  Le  Temps,  where  he  has  taken  the 
place  left  vacant  by  the  death  of  Francisque  Sarcey.  He 
has  written  a  book  on  Racine,  and  another  book  on  Mari- 
vaux ;  he  has  published  volumes  of  literary  and  dramatic 
criticism,  and  criticism  of  painting  and  sculpture.  He 
knows  the  literatures  of  many  countries ;  he  has  travelled, 
observed,  and,  as  we  have  seen,  lectured.  And  he  has 
opinions.  He  believes,  for  instance,  that  there  are  certain 
wicked  abstractions,  Wagnerism,  Tolstoi-ism,  Ibsenism, 
which  must  be  vigorously  opposed,  as  well  as  certain  artists, 
Wagner,  Tolstoi,  Ibsen,  who  have,  at  all  events,  some 
technical  merits  as  well  as  serious  errors  of  substance.  He 
believes  that  Nordau  has  explained,  on  his  theory  of 
degeneration,  "  the  vogue  of  M.  Verlaine,"  and  why 
"  M.  Maeterlinck  was  famous  among  us  for  several  months." 
He  believes  that  Richepin  and  Rostand  have  revived  French 
poetry ;  he  believes  that  Tennyson  was  a  symbolist ;  he 
believes  many  other  things.  In  his  lecture  he  chose 
discreetly  from  among  his  beliefs,  and  in  many  parts  of  it 
was  admirably  sane  and  sober,  and  discriminated  carefully 
between  the  qualities  of  Scribe,  Augier,  and  Dumas  fils,  and 
between  the  qualities  of  M.  Brieux  and  M.  Hervieu.  He 

99 


Mr.  Stephen  Phillips  and  a  Lecture. 

began  by  dismissing  Romanticism  as  an  accident,  a  deviation, 
a  "  mere  French  Revolution."  Hugo  and  the  others  were 
condemned  by  their  poetic  vision  to  see  life  unsteadily,  and 
to  see  it  in  parts.  However,  "  M.  Scribe,"  as,  with  some 
excess  of  politeness,  they  were  accustomed  to  call  him,  set 
all  that  to  rights  by  inventing  {'intrigue.  Scribe,  "  un  homme 
de  genie  ^  incontestablement"  began  the  modern  drama ; 
Augier,  Dumas  fils,  and  Sardou  added  realism  of  detail  to 
his  method  of  bewildering  theatrical  dexterity,  and  all  went 
well  until  the  arrival  of  another  "  accident,"  the  accident  of 
1870-71.  A  new  direction  began  to  be  seen ;  in  the  novel 
the  school  of  Naturalists  had  invented  a  new  form  of  art, 
but  Flaubert,  Zola,  and  Daudet  (whom  M.  Larroumet 
prefers  for  his  "  charm  "),  failed  in  their  attempt  to  trans- 
port the  Naturalistic  novel,  just  as  it  was,  to  the  stage.  It 
was  Henri  Becque  who,  almost  accidentally,  invented  the 
new  form  for  Naturalism  at  the  theatre.  "  Les  Corbeaux  " 
and  "  La  Parisienne  "  were  taken  straight  out  of  his  own 
life,  his  own  experience  ;  he  painted  life  grey  because  he 
say/  it  grey ;  he  was  pitiless  towards  humanity  because  he 
had  found  no  pity  in  men  and  women  ;  he  subordinated 
plot  to  the  exact  rendering  of  fact  because  he  had  not  come 
out  of  any  theatrical  training-school.  Just  then  Antoine 
founded  the  Th£atre-Libre,  the  young  men  of  the  cabarets 
of  Montmartre  added  a  little  bitter  gaiety  to  this  sad  and 
sordid  realism,  and  the  new  formula  was  at  work.  First 
came  Jules  Lemaitre,  with  "  Revoltee  "  ;  then  Georges  de 
Porto-Riche,  with  "  Amoureuse  "  ;  then  Henri  Lavedan, 
with  his  dialogues  in  "  La  Vie  Parisienne,"  and  his  brilliant 
theatrical  success  ;  then  Brieux,  with  "  Blanchette  "  (which 
100 


Mr.  Stephen  Phillips  and  a  Lecture. 

was  to  be  followed  by  "La  Robe  Rouge ") ;  then  Hervieu, 
with  "  Les  Paroles  Restent,"  "  Les  Tenailles,"  "  La  Course 
du  Flambeau  "  (which  seems  to  M.  Larroumet  "  one  of  the 
finest  things  in  all  dramatic  literature  "),  and  "  L'Enigme," 
which  we  were  seeing  the  other  week ;  finally,  Capus,  the 
one  optimist,  with  "  La  Veine  "  and  "  Les  Deux  Ecoles." 
At  the  end  M.  Larroumet  talked  a  little  about  "  Cyrano 
de  Bergerac,"  which  his  audience  seemed  to  recognise  with 
a  start  of  delight,  and  Foiseau  bleu  and  Mdeal  were 
mentioned.  Then,  with  a  hope  for  the  return  of  more 
cheerfulness  and  more  plot,  the  lecture  came  to  an  end.  It 
had  been  interesting ;  it  gave  one  some  solid  information, 
and  suggested  the  limitations  of  the  professor  as  dramatic 
critic.  The  afternoon  had  been  profitably  spent. 

In  the  evening,  after  the  briefest  interval,  I  found  myself 
at  the  St.  James's  Theatre,  where  Mr.  Stephen  Phillips' 
first  play,  "  Paolo  and  Francesca,"  was  at  last,  after  its  long 
delay,  to  be  given.  Let  me  say  at  once  that  it  was  given 
admirably,  that  it  was  given  as  a  poetic  play  should  be  given. 
Mr.  Alexander  has  perhaps  never  attempted  a  more  ambi- 
tious piece  of  acting ;  I  cannot  think  of  any  significant 
moment  in  which  he  did  not  seem  to  me  to  be  doing  exactly 
what  the  author  meant  him  to  do.  If  his  part  was  rather  a 
series  of  detached  moods  than  the  realisation  of  a  single 
character,  that  was  Mr.  Phillips'  fault,  not  Mr.  Alexander's. 
And  Miss  Robins  as  Lucrezia  acted  with  no  less  care  and 
intelligence ;  she  did  all  she  could  to  transform  a  melo- 
dramatic part  into  a  tragic  part.  Miss  Evelyn  Millard  as 
Francesca  looked  and  moved  and  spoke  beautifully :  she 
made  pictures  whenever  she  crossed  the  stage.  Mr.  Ainley 


ICI 


Mr.  Stephen  Phillips  and  a  Lecture. 

as  Paolo  had  the  necessary  good  looks,  and,  though  a  little 
stiff  and  a  little  sulky  at  times,  embodied  the  character  as 
we  find  it  in  the  book  not  altogether  inadequately.  He  was 
rhetorical,  but  so  is  the  part ;  he  fell  into  attitudes,  but  so 
does  the  part;  he  spoke  to  the  audience  rather  than  to 
Francesca,  but  so  the  part  insists  on  his  speaking.  For, 
there  is  no  doubt,  in  all  this  beautiful  talking  and  moving, 
in  these  picturesque  scenes  which  look  so  well  on  the  stage, 
there  is  no  real  life,  no  real  dramatic  life,  but  always,  in  the 
fatal  sense,  "literature."  The  fundamental  human  proba- 
bilities are  not  observed;  the  whole  structure,  with  its  elegance 
and  charm,  is  built  on  an  unsound  basis.  I  very  rarely 
happen  to  see  a  newspaper,  but  I  did  happen  to  see  the 
Morning  Post  on  the  day  after  this  performance,  and  I 
was  struck  by  the  sagacity  of  the  Jong  notice  which  I  found 
there.  It  was  an  analysis  of  the  human  probabilities  of  the 
piece,  and  it  showed  clearly  and  without  prejudice,  allowing 
for  merit  wherever  merit  was  to  be  found,  that  the  piece 
was  constructed  entirely  with  a  view  to  effectiveness, 
superficial  effectiveness,  on  the  stage,  and  not  according  to 
the  variable  but  quite  capturable  logic  of  human  nature.  I 
found  myself  in  agreement  with  almost  every  word  of  the 
notice,  and  I  thought  how  wise  it  was  to  take  the  play  just 
on  those  grounds,  to  examine  it  where  its  real  strength  or 
weakness  was  bound  to  reveal  itself.  Take  any  separate 
scene,  and  you  will  find  that  it  has  its  merits  ;  no,  not  quite 
any  scene,  but  many  of  the  scenes.  Then  examine  that 
scene  as  a  natural  or  probable  occurrence,  as  a  scene  made 
by  the  characters  who  appear  in  it,  and  not  made  to  show 
them  off  on  a  certain  chosen  side.  Take,  for  instance,  the 

102 


Mr.  Stephen  Phillips  and  a  Lecture. 

scene  in  the  drugseller's  shop.  That  was  very  picturesque 
and  effective,  and  it  did  the  stage  business  which  needed  to 
be  done.  But,  taken  as  human  truth  and  not  as  stage 
mechanism,  every  word  was  a  betrayal  rather  than  a  revela- 
tion of  character,  every  action  was  the  exact  contrary  of  the 
action  natural  under  the  circumstances. 

It  would  be  interesting  to  compare  in  detail  Mr.  Phillips* 
"  Paolo  and  Francesca  "  and  d'Annunzio's  "  Francesca  da 
Rimini,"  but  I  will  only  take  one  scene,  which  is  typical  of 
each  writer  :  the  scene  of  the  reading,  the  scene  which 
Dante  has  made  difficult  and  inevitable  for  every  dramatist 
who  deals  with  the  subject.  In  "  Paolo  and  Francesca "  it 
takes  place  in  a  garden  ;  the  book  is  held  on  the  lovers' 
knees  ;  it  is  passed  to  and  fro  without  the  slighest  reason 
except  the  author's  wish  to  give  some  lines  to  each  ;  the 
lines  they  read  are  modern  and  sentimental ;  the  book  has 
to  be  laid  down  awkwardly  in  order  that  the  kiss  may  be 
elegant;  and  Francesca,  as  she  "droops  towards"  Paolo, 
cries,  as  he  kisses  her  :  "  Ah  !  Launcelot ! "  Now,  in 
d'Annunzio,  the  scene  takes  place  in  a  room ;  there  is  a 
reading-desk  beside  a  window-seat ;  the  alternation  of  the 
readers  is  arranged  with  a  probability  which  makes  its  own 
effectiveness  ;  the  lines  they  read  are  taken  word  for  word 
from  the  original  French  prose  romance  of  "  Lancelot  du 
Lac  " ;  and  when  Paolo  kisses  Francesca  her  cry  is  not,  like 
the  English  Francesca's,  a  literary  reminiscence,  but  the  cry 
which  would  instinctively  and  inevitably  come  to  every 
woman's  lips  at  such  a  moment :  "  No,  Paolo  ! "  The 
reason  is  that  d'Annunzio,  whose  play  has  many  faults,  but 
this  conspicuous  merit,  has  conceived  his  play  as  a  thing 
103 


Mr.  Stephen  Phillips  and  a  Lecture. 

that  once  really  happened,  and  that  must  happen  over  again 
on  the  stage  with  the  same  energy  of  life  ;  while  Mr.  Phillips 
has  conceived  his  play,  gracious,  decorative,  full  of  poetical 
feeling  though  it  is,  as  a  literary  thing,  and  as  a  thing  to  be 
acted  ;  not  as  life,  not  as  drama. 


104 


Some  Plays  and  the  Public. 

THERE  was  only  one  new  play  last  week,  "Memory's 
Garden,"  by  Mr.  Albert  Chevalier  and  Mr.  Tom  Gallon, 
at  the  Comedy,  but  there  were  two  revivals,  "  Little  Lord 
Fauntleroy"  at  the  Avenue,  and  "Sweet  Nell  of  Old 
Drury "  at  the  Globe.  Of  these,  "  Little  Lord  Fauntle- 
roy "  was  certainly  the  best  play,  and  "  Sweet  Nell  of  Old 
Drury  "  certainly  the  worst.  "  Memory's  Garden  "  fell 
between  quite  a  number  of  stools,  but  it  aroused  a  certain 
sympathy  as  it  tottered.  I  wish  Mr.  Chevalier  had  relied 
entirely  on  himself  for  his  work,  and  not  called  in  a 
theatrical  joiner  to  fit  his  scenes  together.  I  remember 
that  in  some  of  those  coster  songs  which  he  used  to  sing 
there  was  sometimes  a  touch  of  the  romantic  and  senti- 
mental, but  also  much  genuine  human  feeling.  He  did 
not  write  all  his  songs,  but  he  wrote  the  best  of  them,  and 
sometimes  the  music  of  them,  and  when  he  sang  them  the 
maker  and  the  executant  became  one.  There,  I  always 
felt,  was  a  genuine  artist.  He  had  not  the  range,  the 
poignancy,  or  the  subtlety  of  Yvette  Guilbert,  but  in  many 
ways  he  was  better  than  Paulus  (who  had,  of  course,  a 
sprightly  finish  of  his  own),  better  than  Mr.  Arthur  Roberts 
(who  could  carry  things  before  him  with  a  more  swift  and 
irresistible  comic  dash),  better  than  Mr.  Dan  Leno  (who  at 
his  best  has  an  inimitable  plausibility  of  manner).  He  gave 
the  music-hall  stage  something  it  had  never  had  in  England, 
something  which  it  has  lost  since  he  retired  to  the  chamber- 
concert  atmosphere  of  the  Queen's  Hall.  I  have  not  seen 
him  since  he  has  been  at  the  Queen's  Hall,  but  I  have  been 
105 


Some  Plays  and  the  Public. 

told  that  he  has  extended  his  ground  without  losing  any 
of  the  ground  that  he  had  already  made  his  own.  Only 
the  other  day  he  published  an  autobiography.  Now  he 
comes  before  us  with  a  play. 

There  was  a  queer  sentence  in  it  somewhere,  rather  to 
this  effect :  "  Memory  is  a  garden,  and  the  flowers  in  it  are 
immortal."  Well,  in  the  play  we  get  the  weeds  along  with 
the  flowers.  It  was  an  old  story,  with  a  few  new  details, 
and  there  were  tedious  and  trivial  things  in  it.  But  the 
later  part  of  the  second  act,  the  scene  between  the  seduced 
woman  and  the  father  of  her  seducer,  and  then  the  scene 
between  father  and  son,  had  a  certain  grip  on  reality;  true 
words  were  said  in  the  midst  of  some  merely  conventional 
words.  The  acting  of  this  scene,  though  very  emphatic, 
was  undoubtedly  powerful.  Mr.  Mackintosh  and  Miss 
Norah  Lancaster  were  both  sincere,  they  carried  our  sym- 
pathies over  the  difficult  moments.  For  there  were  difficult 
moments.  These  moved  and  troubled  people  did  not 
speak  always  the  spontaneous  language  of  their  emotion. 
They  were  sometimes  aware  that  an  audience  was  listening. 
But  they  spoke  like  human  beings,  and  not  like  the 
murderous  puppets  of  "The  Heel  of  Achilles."  And 
elsewhere  in  the  play,  where  it  was  much  weaker,  there 
were  incidental  passages  that  suggested  real  people,  such  as 
the  humorous  scene  which  enlivened  the  dragging  third 
act,  the  episode  of  the  old  blind  man  and  his  dog. 

The  humanity  which  we  find  in  "  Little  Lord  Fauntle- 
roy  "  is  a  more  consistent  kind  of  humanity,  and,  acted  as 
it  is,  excellently,  by  Miss  Marion  Terry  and  Master  Vyvian 
Thomas,  I  have  been  able  to  see  it  twice,  with  pleasure, 
1 06 


Some  Plays  and  the  Public. 

within  the  limit  of  a  few  months,  because  it  has  real  feeling 
in  it,  and  words  that  say  what  they  mean.  Mrs.  Hodgson 
Burnett  is  a  writer  of  genuine  talent,  and  she  has  put  her 
best  work  into  this  play.  It  is  the  only  play  about  children 
that  I  know  which  does  not  sicken  me,  with  the  exception 
of  Jules  Renard's  "  Carrots."  "  Carrots,"  of  course,  is 
finer  ;  it  has  more  atmosphere,  it  is  more  purely  a  piece  of 
literature.  "  Little  Lord  Fauntleroy  "  is  not  quite  litera- 
ture, in  the  fine  sense ;  it  has  not  the  terrible  directness  of 
naked  truth.  It  is  truth  in  velvet  knickerbockers.  But, 
up  to  a  certain  point,  how  good  it  is,  how  full  of  tenderly 
humorous  observation !  And  Miss  Marion  Terry,  an 
actress  of  much  greater  capacity  than  the  famous  sister  who 
has  played  so  enchantingly  at  acting,  takes  up  Mrs.  Bur- 
nett's work  where  she  left  it,  and  completes  it.  Then, 
what  a  pleasure  it  is  to  see  a  boy  played  by  a  boy  !  This 
particular  boy  seems  to  me  astonishingly  clever,  already  a 
finished  artist,  doing  everything  naturally,  and  knowing 
why  he  does  it. 

At  "Sweet  Nell  of  Old  Drury"  I  happened  to  be  in  the 
last  row  of  the  stalls.  My  seat  was  not  altogether  well 
adapted  for  seeing  and  hearing  the  play,  but  it  was  admir- 
ably adapted  for  observing  the  pit,  and  I  gave  some  of  my 
attention  to  my  neighbours  there.  Whenever  a  foolish  joke 
was  made  on  the  stage,  when  Miss  Julia  Neilson,  as  Nell, 
the  orange  girl,  stuttered  with  laughter  or  romped  heavily 
across  the  stage,  the  pit  thrilled  and  quivered  with  delight. 
At  every  piece  of  clowning  there  was  the  same  responsive 
gurgle  of  delight.  Tricks  of  acting  so  badly  done  that  I 
should  have  thought  a  child  would  have  seen  through  them, 
107 


Some  Plays  and  the  Public. 

and  resented  them  as  an  imposition,  were  accepted  in  per- 
fect good  faith,  and  gloated  over.  I  was  turning  over 
the  matter  in  my  mind  afterwards,  when  I  remembered 
something  that  was  said  to  me  the  other  day  by  a  young 
Swedish  poet  who  is  now  in  London.  He  told  me  that  he 
had  been  to  most  of  the  theatres,  and  he  had  been  surprised 
to  find  that  the  greater  part  of  the  pieces  which  were  played 
at  the  principal  London  theatres  were  such  pieces  as  would 
be  played  in  Norway  and  Sweden  at  the  lower  class  theatres, 
and  that  nobody  here  seemed  to  mind.  The  English  audi- 
ence, he  said,  reminded  him  of  a  lot  of  children  ;  they  took 
what  was  set  before  them  with  ingenuous  good  temper, 
they  laughed  when  they  were  expected  to  laugh,  cried  when 
they  were  expected  to  cry.  But  of  criticism,  preference, 
selection,  not  a  trace.  He  was  amazed,  for  he  had  been 
told  that  London  was  a  centre  of  civilisation.  Well,  in 
future  I  shall  try  to  remember,  when  I  hear  an  audience 
clapping  its  hands  wildly  over  some  bad  play,  badly  acted : 
it  is  all  right,  it  is  only  the  children. 


108 


"  Ben  Hur  "  on  the  Stage. 

THE  novel  of  "Ben  Hur,"  notwithstanding  its  enormous 
popularity,  has  merit.  It  distinguishes  itself  from  other 
books  of  the  kind  by  a  certain  homely  simplicity,  and  by 
the  distinctness  with  which  the  writer  sees  what  he  is  writing 
about.  It  is  called  "  a  tale  of  the  Christ,"  and  it  begins 
with  the  meeting  of  the  three  Wise  Men  in  the  desert,  on 
their  way  to  Bethlehem,  and  ends  with  the  Crucifixion. 
General  Wallace  has  been  wise  in  making  the  main  part  of 
his  story  independent  of  the  story  of  the  life  of  Christ. 
Christ  is  seen,  in  passing,  two  or  three  times  ;  but,  until  the 
end,  that  is  all.  The  only  words  which  he  speaks  are  the 
words  recorded  in  the  Gospels.  He  heals  two  lepers,  who 
are  the  lost  mother  and  sister  of  Ben  Hur.  Ben  Hur  watches 
him  die,  and  afterwards  builds  the  catacomb  of  San  Calixto 
in  Rome,  as  a  refuge  for  the  Christians.  "  Out  of  that  vast 
tomb,"  says  the  author  in  his  last  sentence,  "  Christianity 
issued  to  supersede  the  Caesars." 

Strictly  speaking,  the  book  is  not  written  at  all.  The 
language  is  awkward,  uncomfortable,  like  the  language  of 
a  man  who  is  taking  up  his  pen  for  the  first  time.  We 
come  constantly  upon  such  phrases  as :  "  The  goodness  of 
the  reader  is  again  besought  in  favour  of  an  explanation  "  ; 
or,  "  With  this  plain  generalisation  in  mind,  all  further 
desirable  knowledge  upon  the  subject  can  be  had  by  follow- 
ing the  incidents  of  the  scene  occurring."  A  Bacchante  in 
the  grove  of  Daphne,  trying  to  talk  poetically,  talks  after 
this  fashion  :  "  The  winds  which  blow  here  are  respirations 
of  the  gods.  Let  us  give  ourselves  to  waftage  of  the  winds." 
109 


"  Ben  Hur  "  on  the  Stage. 

But  this  childishness  of  style  cannot  conceal  the  thought, 
knowledge,  and  sympathy  which  General  Wallace  has  put 
into  his  book.  The  description  of  the  desert,  at  the  begin- 
ning, clumsily  though  it  is  written,  is  sensitively  felt ;  these 
halting  sentences  do,  after  all,  what  they  are  meant  to  do ; 
they  give  us  the  sensation  of  the  desert,  the  camel,  and  the 
travellers.  The  description  of  the  Arab  horses,  in  the 
fourth  book,  is  that  of  a  man  who  knows  and  loves  horses  ; 
the  fight  at  sea  between  the  galleys,  the  whole  episode  of 
the  galley-slaves,  is  vividly  realised  in  every  detail ;  the  life 
of  the  desert  and  of  the  cities,  the  different  lives  of  the 
nations  swarming  together  without  mingling,  are  indicated 
with  not  too  obvious  a  purpose.  The  story  itself  is  a  series 
of  adventures,  chosen  for  their  effectiveness,  and  certainly 
effective.  Without  being  literature,  it  is  something  more 
than  a  sensation  novel  of  the  first  century. 

Now  turn  to  the  play,  as  it  is  to  be  seen  at  Drury  Lane. 
The  atmosphere,  suggested  in  the  book,  is  painted  crudely 
upon  moving  canvases  ;  there  is  the  real  camel,  indeed  a 
delightful  beast,  who  went  through  his  part  meekly,  but 
with  ironical  grimaces ;  there  is  a  cunning  floor  which 
runs  one  way  under  the  horses'  feet  while  the  horses 
run  the  other  way,  and  you  see  the  chariot  race  in  the 
arena ;  there  is  a  search-light  from  the  level  of  the  upper 
boxes,  to  represent  the  glory  of  the  face  of  Christ,  cleansing 
lepers.  The  lepers  themselves  are  before  you,  quite  neat 
and  clean,  their  faces  chalked  a  little,  but,  luckily,  not  at  all 
as  General  Wallace  describes  them  in  the  novel.  The  dis- 
tressing "  thee  "  and  "  thou "  of  the  novel  remain,  and 
much  of  the  distressing  dialogue.  But  the  adventures,  which 
no 


"  Ben  Hur  "  on  the  Stage. 

seemed  a  little  detached  even  there,  present  themselves  now 
without  any  obvious  link  of  connection  ;  the  characters, 
somewhat  vague  and  somewhat  generalised  though  they  were, 
have  turned  rigid  and  stamped  themselves  in  some  few  crude 
gestures.  Beauty,  as  well  as  strangeness,  is  suggested  in  the 
novel ;  there  is  little  beauty,  and  only  at  times  a  really 
interesting  strangeness,  in  what  Drury  Lane  has  to  show  us. 
The  fact  is,  romance  of  this  remote  kind  cannot  be  finely 
brought  before  us  in  the  crude  way  of  our  modern  spectacular 
theatres.  The  flash-light  rationalises  Christ  into  a  synonym 
for  the  latest  electric  cure  of  leprosy.  I  thought  it  grotesque, 
from  the  point  of  view  of  artistic  or  of  religious  reverence. 
Now  the  draped  and  painted  figure,  like  a  Russian  ikon, 
which  stood  for  God  the  Father  in  the  Elizabethan  Stage 
Society's  representation  of  "  Everyman,"  seemed  to  me 
quite  reverently  conceived  and  rendered.  If  we  are  to  deal 
with  great  subjects  we  must  deal  with  them  straightforwardly. 
Let  us  bring  any  deific  or  angelic  being  on  the  stage  if  we 
will  do  it  simply,  as  the  peasants  do  at  Ober-Ammergau.  I 
once  saw  Sarah  Bernhardt  hissed  off  the  stage  in  Paris  for 
taking  the  part  of  the  Virgin  Mary  in  a  dramatic  poem 
of  Edmond  Haraucourt,  a  poet  of  at  least  serious  inten- 
tions. It  was  not  that  the  verses  of  "  La  Passion  "  had 
any  irreverence  in  them,  it  was  merely  tint  Sarah  Bern- 
hardt was  a  Jewess,  and  there  is  a  feeling  in  France  against 
the  Virgin  Mary  being  associated  with  persons  of  her  own 
race.  In  the  novel  Ben  Hur  watches  the  Crucifixion ;  the 
adaptor  stayed  his  hand  in  time,  and  we  are  left  with 
an  Edwin  Long  picture  of  women  and  children,  holding 
olive  branches  in  their  hands,  and  singing,  "  Hosanna  ! 
i  ii 


"  Ben  Hur  "  on  the  Stage. 

Hosanna !  Hosanna  in  the  highest ! "  as  they  come  down 
from  Mount  Olivet. 

In  the  scene  which  preceded  this  one,  the  scene  of  the 
miracle,  there  was  some  attempt  to  produce  one  of  those 
effects  which  only  Mr.  Gordon  Craig  seems  able  to  produce 
satisfactorily.  The  stage  was  in  darkness,  gradually  a  little 
light  stole  in,  and  a  tossing  crowd  was  seen  dimly,  waving 
its  hands  in  the  air.  So  far  so  good,  but  the  light,  I 
suppose  to  suggest  miraculous  methods,  which  it  did  not 
suggest,  increased  rapidly,  and  the  effect  was  gone  almost 
before  we  had  time  to  realise  it.  The  crowd,  when  seen, 
was  an  ordinary  stage-crowd,  and,  though  all  the  faces 
should  have  been  turned  in  the  direction  from  which  Christ 
was  supposed  to  be  approaching,  half  of  them  were  turned 
in  the  opposite  direction.  The  reason  was  that  a  chorus  was 
being  sung,  and  the  chorus  ladies  and  gentlemen  had  evidently 
been  told  to  keep  their  eyes  fixed  on  the  electrically  lighted 
baton  of  the  conductor.  They  did,  but  the  stage-picture 
was  spoilt,  and  there  was  nothing  in  the  music  to  make 
amends  for  it. 


I  12 


"  Faust "  at  the  Lyceum. 

SIR  HENRY  IRVING  has  revived  the  version  of  Goethe's 
"  Faust "  which  W.  G.  Wills  made  for  him  some  twenty 
years  ago,  and  is  now  playing  it  at  the  Lyceum,  with  Miss 
Cecilia  Loftus  instead  of  Miss  Ellen  Terry  as  Margaret. 
The  piece  has  no  longer  novelty,  the  technique  of  its  stage 
managing  is  no  longer  surprising  ;  Miss  Loftus  is  good,  but 
not  startlingly  good ;  Sir  Henry  is  much  the  same  as  he  has 
always  been,  and  one  is  inclined  to  wonder  whether  the  piece, 
taken  more  or  less  on  its  own  merits,  is  likely  to  repeat  its 
old,  almost  unparalleled  successes. 

Wills'  adaptation  begins  with  the  third  scene  of  "  Faust," 
the  scene  of  the  study,  the  poodle,  Mephistopheles,  and  the 
student.  The  scene  of  the  Witches'  Kitchen  comes  next, 
and  the  scene  in  Auerbach's  cellar  is  transferred,  in  a  some- 
what mutilated  shape,  to  the  Lorenz-Platz  at  Nuremberg. 
The  two  street  scenes  between  Faust  and  Mephistopheles 
are  condensed  into  one,  which  takes  place  on  the  city  wall, 
against  a  curtain  giving  a  red-roofed  view  of  Nuremberg. 
The  spinning-wheel  is  transferred  from  Margaret's  room  to 
Martha's  garden.  Otherwise  the  adaptation  follows  the 
original  scene  by  scene.  Unfortunately  Wills  was  not  as 
well  satisfied  with  Goethe's  verse  as  with  his  construction, 
though  it  happens  that  the  verse  is  distinctly  better  than  the 
construction.  He  kept  the  shell  and  threw  away  the  kernel. 
Faust  becomes  insignificant  in  this  play  to  which  he  gives  his 
name.  In  Goethe  he  was  a  thinker,  even  more  than  a  poet. 
Here  he  speaks  bad  verse  full  of  emptiness.  Even  where 
Goethe's  words  are  followed,  in  a  literal  translation,  the 
113  H 


"  Faust "  at  the  Lyceum. 

meaning  seems  to  have  gone  out  of  them;  they  are  dis- 
placed, they  no  longer  count  for  anything.  The  Walpurgis 
Night  is  stripped  of  all  its  poetry,  and  Faust's  study  is 
emptied  of  all  its  wisdom.  The  Witches'  Kitchen  brews 
messes  without  magic,  lest  the  gallery  should  be  bewildered. 
The  part  of  Martha  is  extended,  in  order  to  get  in  some 
more  than  indifferent  "  comic  relief."  Mephistopheles 
throws  away  a  good  part  of  his  cunning  wit,  in  order 
that  he  may  shock  no  prejudices  by  seeming  to  be  cynical 
with  seriousness,  and  in  order  that  his  red  livery  may  have 
its  full  spectral  effect.  Margaret  is  to  be  seen  full  length ; 
the  little  German  soubrette  does  her  best  to  be  the  Helen 
Faust  takes  her  for ;  and  we  are  meant  to  be  profoundly 
interested  in  the  love-story.  "  Most  of  all,"  the  pro- 
gramme assures  us,  Wills  "  strove  to  tell  the  love-story 
in  a  manner  that  might  appeal  to  an  English-speaking 
audience." 

Now  if  you  take  the  philosophy  and  the  poetry  out  of 
Goethe's  "  Faust,"  and  leave  the  rest,  it  does  not  seem  to  me 
that  you  leave  the  part  which  is  best  worth  having.  In 
writing  the  First  Part  of  "  Faust "  Goethe  made  free  use  of 
the  legend  of  Dr.  Faustus,  not  always  improving  that  legend 
where  he  departed  from  it.  If  we  turn  to  Marlowe's  "  Dr. 
Faustus  "  we  shall  see,  embedded  among  chaotic  fragments 
of  mere  rubbish  and  refuse,  the  outlines  of  a  far  finer, 
a  far  more  poetic,  conception  of  the  legend.  Marlowe's 
imagination  was  more  essentially  a  poetic  imagination 
than  Goethe's,  and  he  was  capable,  at  moments,  of  more 
satisfying  dramatic  effects.  When  his  Faustus  says  to 
Mephistopheles : 
114 


"  Faust "  at  the  Lyceum. 

One  thing,  good  servant,  let  me  crave  of  thee, 
To  glut  the  longing  of  my  heart's  desire  : 
That  I  may  have  unto  my  paramour 
That  heavenly  Helen  which  I  saw  of  late  ; 

and  when,  his  prayer  being  granted,  he  cries  : 

Was  this  the  face  that  launched  a  thousand  ships, 
And  burned  the  topless  towers  of  Ilium  ? 

he  is  a  much  more  splendid  and  significant  person  than  the 
Faust  of  Goethe,  who  needs  the  help  of  the  devil  and  of  an 
old  woman  to  seduce  a  young  girl  who  has  fallen  in  love 
with  him  at  first  sight.  Goethe,  it  is  true,  made  what 
amends  he  could  afterwards,  in  the  Second  Part,  when  much 
of  the  impulse  had  gone  and  all  the  deliberation  in  the  world 
was  not  active  enough  to  replace  it.  Helen  has  her  share, 
among  other  abstractions,  but  the  breath  has  not  returned 
into  her  body,  she  is  glacial,  a  talking  enigma,  to  whom 
Marlowe's  Faustus  would  never  have  said  with  the  old 
emphasis  : 

And  none  but  thou  shalt  be  my  paramour  ! 

What  remains,  then,  in  Wills'  version,  is  the  Gretchen 
story,  in  all  its  detail,  a  spectacular  representation  of  the  not 
wholly  sincere  witchcraft,  and  the  impressive  outer  shell  of 
Mephistopheles,  with,  in  Sir  Henry  Irving's  pungent  and 
acute  rendering,  something  of  the  real  savour  of  the  denying 
spirit.  Mephistopheles  is  the  modern  devil,  the  devil  of 
culture  and  polite  negation  ;  the  comrade,  in  part  the  master, 
of  Heine,  and  perhaps  the  grandson  and  pupil  of  Voltaire. 

"5 


<c  Faust "  at  the  Lyceum. 

On  the  Lyceum  stage  he  is  the  one  person  of  distinction,  the 
one  intelligence  ;  though  so  many  of  his  best  words  have 
been  taken  from  him,  it  is  with  a  fine  subtlety  that  he  says 
the  words  that  remain.  And  the  figure,  with  its  lightness, 
weary  grace,  alert  and  uneasy  step,  solemnity,  grim  laughter, 
remains  with  one,  after  one  has  come  away  and  forgotten 
whether  he  told  us  all  that  Goethe  confided  to  him. 


116 


Yvette  Guilbert. 
I. 

SHE  is  tall,  thin,  a  little  angular,  most  winningly  and 
girlishly  awkward,  as  she  wanders  on  to  the  stage  with 
an  air  of  vague  distraction.  Her  shoulders  droop,  her 
arms  hang  limply.  She  doubles  forward  in  an  automatic 
bow  in  response  to  the  thunders  of  applause,  and  that 
curious  smile  breaks  out  along  her  lips  and  rises  and  dances 
in  her  bright  light-blue  eyes,  wide  open  in  a  sort  of  child- 
like astonishment.  Her  hair,  a  bright  auburn,  rises  in  soft 
masses  above  a  large  pure  forehead.  She  wears  a  trailing 
dress,  stripped  yellow  and  pink,  without  ornament.  Her 
arms  are  covered  with  long  black  gloves.  The  applause 
stops  suddenly  ;  there  is  a  hush  of  suspense ;  she  is  begin- 
ning to  sing. 

And  with  the  first  note  you  realise  the  difference  between 
Yvette  Guilbert  and  all  the  rest  of  the  world.  A  sonnet  by 
Mr.  Andre  Raffalovich  states  just  that  difference  so  subtly 
that  I  must  quote  it  to  help  out  my  interpretation  : 

If  you  want  hearty  laughter,  country  mirth — 

Or  frantic  gestures  of  an  acrobat, 
Heels  over  head — or  floating  lace  skirts  worth 

I  know  not  what,  a  large  eccentric  hat 
And  diamonds,  the  gift  of  some  dull  boy — 

Then  when  you  see  her  do  not  wrong  Yvette, 
Because  Yvette  is  not  a  clever  toy, 

A  tawdry  doll  in  fairy  limelight  set  .... 
And  should  her  song  sound  cynical  and  base 

At  first,  herself  ungainly,  or  her  smile 
Monotonous — wait,  listen,  watch  her  face  : 

The  sufferings  of  those  the  world  calls  vile 
117 


Yvette  Guilbert. 

She  sings,  and  as  you  watch  Yvette  Guilbert, 
You  too  will  shiver,  seeing  their  despair. 

Now  to  me  Yvette  Guilbert  was  exquisite  from  the  first 
moment.  "  Exquisite  !  "  I  said  under  my  breath,  as  I  first 
saw  her  come  upon  the  stage.  But  it  is  not  by  her  personal 
charm  that  she  thrills  you,  and  I  admit  that  her  personal 
charm  could  be  called  in  question.  It  must  be  said,  too, 
that  she  can  do  pure  comedy,  that  she  can  be  merely, 
deliciously,  gay.  There  is  one  of  her  songs  in  which  she 
laughs,  chuckles,  and  trills  a  rapid  flurry  of  broken  words 
and  phrases,  with  the  sudden,  spontaneous,  irresponsible 
mirth  of  a  bird.  But  where  she  is  most  herself  is  in  a 
manner  of  tragic  comedy  which  has  never  been  seen  on  the 
music-hall  stage  from  the  beginning.  It  is  the  profoundly 
sad  and  essentially  serious  comedy  which  one  sees  in  Forain's 
drawings,  those  rapid  outlines  which,  with  the  turn  of  a 
pencil,  give  you  the  whole  existence  of  those  base  sections 
of  society  which  our  art  in  England  is  mainly  forced  to 
ignore.  People  call  the  art  of  Forain  immoral,  they  call 
Yvette  Guilbert's  songs  immoral.  That  is  merely  the  conven- 
tional misuse  of  a  conventional  word.  The  art  of  Yvette 
Guilbert  is  certainly  the  art  of  realism.  She  brings  before 
you  the  real  life-drama  of  the  streets,  of  the  pot-house ; 
she  shows  you  the  seamy  side  of  life  behind  the  scenes  ; 
she  calls  things  by  their  right  names.  But  there  is  not  a 
touch  of  sensuality  about  her,  she  is  neither  contaminated  nor 
contaminating  by  what  she  sings ;  she  is  simply  a  great,  imper- 
sonal, dramatic  artist,  who  sings  realism  as  others  write  it. 

Her  gamut  in  the  purely  comic  is  wide  ;  with  an  inflection 
its 


Yvette  Guilbert. 

of  the  voice,  a  bend  of  that  curious  long  thin  body  which 
seems  to  be  embodied  gesture,  she  can   suggest,  she  can 
portray,  the  humour  that  is  dry,   ironical,  coarse  (I    will 
admit),  unctuous  even.     Her  voice  can  be  sweet  or  harsh  ; 
it  can  chirp,  lilt,  chuckle,  stutter ;  it  can  moan  or  laugh,  be 
tipsy    or    distinguished.      Nowhere    is    she   conventional ; 
nowhere  does  she  even  resemble  any  other  French   singer. 
Voice,  face,  gestures,  pantomime,  all  are  different,  all  are 
purely  her  own.     She  is  a  creature  of  contrasts,  and  suggests 
at  once  all  that  is  innocent  and  all  that  is  perverse.     She 
has  the  pure  blue  eyes  of  a  child,  eyes  that  are  cloudless, 
that  gleam  with  a  wicked  ingenuousness,  that  close  in  the  utter 
abasement  of  weariness,  that  open  wide  in  all  the  expression- 
lessness  of  surprise.     Her  naivete  is  perfect,  and  perfect, 
too,    is  that  strange   subtle    smile   of  comprehension  that 
closes  the  period.     A  great  impersonal  artist,  depending  as 
she  does  entirely  on  her  expressive   power,   her  dramatic 
capabilities,   her  gift  for  being  moved,  for  rendering  the 
emotions  of  those  in  whom  we  do  not  look  for  just  that 
kind  of  emotion,  she  affects  one  all  the  time  as  being,  after 
all,    removed   from   what   she   sings   of ;  an   artist   whose 
sympathy  is  an  instinct,  a  divination.     There  is  something 
automatic   in  all  fine  histrionic  genius,  and  I  find  some  of 
the  charm  of  the  automaton  in  Yvette  Guilbert.     The  real 
woman,  one  fancies,  is  the  slim  bright-haired  girl  who  looks 
so  pleased  and  so  amused  when  you  applaud  her,  and  whom 
it   pleases  to  please  you,  just  because  it  is  amusing.     She 
could  not  tell  you  how  she  happens  to  be  a  great  artist ; 
how  she  has  found  a  voice  for  the  tragic  comedy  of  cities ; 
how  it  is  that  she  makes  you  cry  when  she  sings  of  sordid 
119 


Yvette  Guilbert. 

miseries.  "  That  is  her  secret,"  we  are  accustomed  to  say  ; 
and  I  like  to  imagine  that  it  is  a  secret  which  she  herself 
has  never  fathomed. 

II. 

The  difference  between  Yvette  Guilbert  and  every  one 
else  on  the  music-hall  stage  is  precisely  the  difference 
between  Sarah  Bernhardt  and  every  one  else  on  the  stage  of 
legitimate  drama.  Elsewhere  you  may  find  many  admirable 
qualities,  many  brilliant  accomplishments,  but  nowhere  else 
that  revelation  of  an  extraordinarily  interesting  personality 
through  the  medium  of  an  extraordinarily  finished  art. 
Yvette  Guilbert  has  something  new  to  say,  and  she  has 
discovered  a  new  way  of  saying  it.  She  has  had  precursors, 
but  she  has  eclipsed  them.  She  sings,  for  instance,  songs  of 
Aristide  Bruant,  songs  which  he  had  sung  before  her,  and 
sung  admirably,  in  his  brutal  and  elaborately  careless  way. 
But  she  has  found  meanings  in  them  which  Bruant,  who 
wrote  them,  never  discovered,  or,  certainly,  could  never 
interpret ;  she  has  surpassed  him  in  his  own  quality,  the 
macabre ;  she  has  transformed  the  rough  material,  which 
had  seemed  adequately  handled  until  she  showed  how  much 
more  could  be  done  with  it,  into  something  artistically  fine 
and  distinguished.  And  just  as,  in  the  brutal  and  macabre 
style,  she  has  done  what  Bruant  was  only  trying  to  do,  so, 
in  the  style,  supposed  to  be  traditionally  French,  of  delicate 
insinuation,  she  has  invented  new  shades  of  expression,  she 
has  discovered  a  whole  new  method  of  suggestion.  And  it 
is  here,  perhaps,  that  the  new  material  which  she  has  known, 
by  some  happy  instinct,  how  to  lay  her  hands  on,  has  been 
1 20 


Yvette  Guilbert. 

of  most  service  to  jher.  She  sings,  a  little  cruelly,  of  the 
young  girl ;  and  the  young  girl  of  her  songs  (that  demoiselle 
de  pensionnat  who  is  the  heroine  of  one  of  the  most 
famous  of  them)  is  a  very  different  being  from  the  fair 
abstraction,  even  rosier  and  vaguer  to  the  French  mind  than 
it  is  to  the  English,  which  stands  for  the  ideal  of  girlhood. 
It  is,  rather,  the  young  girl  as  Goncourt  has  rendered  her  in 
"  Cherie,"  a  creature  of  awakening,  half-unconscious  sensa- 
tions, already  at  work  somewhat  abnormally  in  an  ansemic 
frame,  with  an  intelligence  left  to  feed  mainly  on  itself. 
And  Yvette  herself,  with  her  bright  hair,  the  sleepy  gold 
fire  of  her  eyes,  her  slimness,  her  gracious  awkwardness, 
her  air  of  delusive  innocence,  is  the  very  type  of  the 
young  girl  of  whom  she  sings.  There  is  a  certain  malice 
in  it  all,  a  malicious  insistence  on  the  other  side  of  inno- 
cence. But  there  it  is,  a  new  figure ;  and  but  one  among 
the  creations  which  we  owe  to  this  "  comic  singer,"  whose 
comedy  is,  for  the  most  part,  so  serious  and  so  tragic. 

For  the  art  of  Yvette  Guilbert  is  of  that  essentially 
modern  kind  which,  even  in  a  subject  supposed  to  be  comic, 
a  subject  we  are  accustomed  to  see  dealt  with,  if  dealt  with 
at  all,  in  burlesque,  seeks  mainly  for  the  reality  of  things 
(and  reality,  if  we  get  deep  enough  into  it,  is  never  comic), 
and  endeavours  to  find  a  new,  searching,  and  poignant  ex- 
pression for  that.  It  is  an  art  concerned,  for  the  most  part, 
with  all  that  part  of  life  which  the  conventions  were 
invented  to  hide  from  us.  We  see  a  world  where  people 
are  very  vicious  and  very  unhappy ;  a  sordid,  miserable 
world  which  it  is  as  well  sometimes  to  consider.  It  is  a  side 
of  existence  which  exists  ;  and  to  see  it  is  not  to  be  attracted 

121 


Yvette  Guilbert. 

towards  it.  It  is  a  grey  and  sordid  land,  under  the  sway  of 
"  Eros  vann6  "  ;  it  is,  for  the  most  part,  weary  of  itself, 
without  rest,  and  without  escape.  This  is  Yvette  Guilbert's 
domain ;  she  sings  it,  as  no  one  has  ever  sung  it  before, 
with  a  tragic  realism,  touched  with  a  sort  of  grotesque  irony, 
which  is  a  new  thing  on  any  stage.  The  rouleuse  of  the 
Quartier  Br6da,  praying  to  the  one  saint  in  her  calendar, 
"  Sainte  Galette  "  ;  the  soularde,  whom  the  urchins  follow  and 
throw  stones  at  in  the  street ;  the  whole  life  of  the  slums  and 
the  gutter :  these  are  her  subjects,  and  she  brings  them,  by 
some  marvellous  fineness  of  treatment,  into  the  sphere  of  art. 
It  is  all  a  question  of  m&tier^  no  doubt,  though  how  far 
her  method  is  conscious  and  deliberate  it  is  difficult  to  say. 
But  she  has  certain  quite  obvious  qualities,  of  reticence,  of 
moderation,  of  suspended  emphasis,  which  can  scarcely  be 
other  than  conscious  and  deliberate.  She  uses  but  few 
gestures,  and  these  brief,  staccato,  and  for  an  immediate 
purpose  ;  her  hands,  in  their  long  black  gloves,  are  almost 
motionless,  the  arms  hang  limply  ;  and  yet  every  line  of  the 
face  and  body  seems  alive,  alive  and  repressed.  Her  voice 
can  be  harsh  or  sweet,  as  she  would  have  it,  can  laugh  or 
cry,  be  menacing  or  caressing  ;  it  is  never  used  for  its  own 
sake,  decoratively,  but  for  a  purpose,  for  an  effect.  And 
how  every  word  tells !  Every  word  comes  to  you  clearly, 
carrying  exactly  its  meaning ;  and,  somehow,  along  with  the 
words,  an  emotion,  which  you  may  resolve  to  ignore,  but 
which  will  seize  upon  you,  which  will  go  through  and 
through  you.  Trick  or  instinct,  there  it  is,  the  power  to 
make  you  feel  intensely ;  and  that  is  precisely  the  final  test 
of  a  great  dramatic  artist. 

122 


The  Paris  Music-Hail. 

IT  is  not  always  realised  by  Englishmen  that  England  is 
really  the  country  of  the  music-hall,  the  only  country  where 
it  has  taken  firm  root  and  flowered  elegantly.  There  is 
nothing  in  any  part  of  Europe  to  compare,  in  their  own 
way,  with  the  Empire  and  the  Alhambra,  either  as  places 
luxurious  in  themselves  or  as  places  where  a  brilliant 
spectacle  is  to  be  seen.  It  is  true  that,  in  England,  the  art 
of  the  ballet  has  gone  down  ;  the  prima  ballerina  assoluta 
is  getting  rare,  the  primo  uomo  is  extinct.  The  training 
of  dancers  as  dancers  leaves  more  and  more  to  be  desired, 
but  that  is  a  defect  which  we  share,  at  the  present  time, 
with  most  other  countries;  while  the  beauty  of  the  spectacle, 
with  us,  is  unique.  Think  of  "  Les  Papillons "  or  of 
"  Old  China  "  at  the  Empire,  and  then  go  and  see  a  fantastic 
ballet  at  Paris,  at  Vienna,  or  at  Berlin  !  And  it  is  not  only 
in  regard  to  the  ballet,  but  in  regard  also  to  the  "turns,'* 
that  we  are  so  far  ahead  of  all  our  competitors.  I  have 
just  been  spending  a  couple  of  evenings  at  two  of  the  most 
characteristic  Parisian  music-halls,  the  Folies-Bergere  and 
La  Scala.  The  "  chief  attraction  "  of  the  former  was  "  Une 
Revue  aux  Folies-Bergere,"  a  pantomimic  show  with  some 
dancing  ;  at  the  latter,  "  Messalinette,"  a  "  revue,"  with  no 
dancing  at  all.  There  were  other  turns :  vocalists  at  the 
Scala,  jugglers,  and  American  eccentrics,  and  the  like,  at 
the  Folies-Bergere.  To  see  the  typical  Paris  singer  you 
must  go  to  the  Scala ;  but  for  everything  else  the  Folies- 
Bergere  is  certainly  to  be  preferred. 

I  have  no  great  admiration  for  most  of  our  comic  gentle- 

I23 


The  Paris  Music-Hall. 

men  and  ladies  in  London,  but  I  find  it  still  more  difficult 
to  take  any  interest  in  the  comic  gentlemen  and  ladies  of 
Paris.  Take  Marie  Lloyd,  for  instance,  and  compare  with 
her,  say,  Marguerite  Deval  at  the  Scala.  Both  aim  at  much 
the  same  effect,  but,  contrary  to  what  might  have  been 
expected,  it  is  the  Englishwoman  who  shows  the  greater 
finesse  in  the  rendering  of  that  small  range  of  sensations  to 
which  both  give  themselves  up  frankly.  Take  Polin,  who 
is  supposed  to  express  vulgarities  with  unusual  success. 
Those  automatic  gestures,  flapping  and  flopping ;  that 
dribbling  voice,  without  intonation ;  that  flabby  droop  and 
twitch  of  the  face ;  all  that  soapy  rubbing-in  of  the  expres- 
sive parts  of  the  song :  I  could  see  no  skill  in  it  all,  of  a 
sort  worth  having.  The  women  here  sing  mainly  with  their 
shoulders,  for  which  they  seem  to  have  been  chosen,  and 
which  are  often  undoubtedly  expressive.  Often  they  do  not 
even  take  the  trouble  to  express  anything  with  voice  or  face  ; 
the  face  remains  blank,  the  voice  trots  creakily.  It  is  a  doll 
who  repeats  its  lesson,  holding  itself  up  to  be  seen. 

There  was  one  woman  at  the  Folies-Bergere  who  had 
genuine  talent,  Louise  Balthy.  She  reminded  me  a  little 
of  Miss  Effie  Fay.  She  was  the  principal  performer  in  the 
"  Revue  aux  Folies-Bergere,"  and  she  did  a  parody  of  Sarah 
Bernhardt  in  "  Theodora."  She  was  "  Miss  Barnum,"  the 
Music-Hall,  and  the  Dance.  In  the  last  she  did  a  series  of 
quick  changes  (partly  on  the  stage),  and  indicated,  with  a 
vivid  skill  of  parody,  Italian,  Russian,  Spanish,  English, 
and  French  ways  of  dancing.  She  galloped  through  all  her 
parts  with  astonishing  celerity,  putting  sharp  meanings  into 
things  with  a  gesture,  an  intonation,  a  fling  or  twist  of  her 
124 


The  Paris  Music-Hall. 

long,  supple  body.  And  she  had  a  voice  which  she  knew 
how  to  use  for  her  own  purposes.  No  one  else  showed  any 
real,  distinguishable  ability.  The  amusement  of  the  piece 
was  all  contained  in  its  costumes  and  scenery,  in  the  indis- 
cretions of  the  costumes  and  the  piquant  changes  of  the 
scenery.  We  saw  the  roofs  at  midnight,  with  some  human 
cats,  the  Cirque  d'Ete,  a  "  seance  mouvementee "  at  a 
political  club,  and  the  house  of  "  la  Pai'va,"  the  famous 
courtesan  of  whom  the  Goncourts  give  so  interesting  an 
account  in  their  journal.  La  Pa'fva  is  seen  taking  her  bath  ; 
she  is  seen,  scarcely  more  dressed,  as  the  centre  of  a  f£te 
under  the  Second  Empire.  And  all  this  rattles  and  glitters 
with  the  regular  French  clatter  of  music  in  the  orchestra 
during  all  but  the  fourth  and  fifth  scenes,  for  which  M. 
Louis  Ganne  had  written  music.  We  are  to  hear  M.  Ganne's 
music,  as  I  have  always  wanted  to  hear  it,  in  London, 
accompanying  a  Japanese  ballet  at  the  Alhambra.  It  is 
essentially  ballet  music,  full  of  clear  colour,  of  gracious 
movement,  with  a  definite,  yet  not  too  emphatic,  rhythm, 
beating  out  the  dancing  steps  gaily. 

The  French  "  revue,"  as  one  sees  it  here,  done  somewhat 
roughly  and  sketchily,  strikes  one  most  of  all  by  its  curious 
want  of  consecution,  its  entire  reliance  on  the  point  of  this 
or  that  scene,  costume,  or  performer.  It  has  no  plan,  no 
idea  ;  some  ideas  are  flung  into  it  in  passing ;  but  it  remains 
as  shapeless  as  an  English  pantomime,  and  not  much  more 
interesting.  Both  appeal  to  the  same  undeveloped  instincts, 
the  English  to  a  merely  childish  vulgarity,  the  French  to  a 
vulgarity  which  is  more  frankly  vicious.  Really,  I  hardly 
know  which  is  to  be  preferred.  In  England  we  pretend 
125 


The  Paris  Music-Hall. 

that  fancy  dress  is  all  in  the  interests  of  morality  ;  in  France 
they  make  no  such  pretence,  and,  in  dispensing  with 
shoulder-straps,  do  but  make  their  intentions  a  little 
clearer.  Go  to  the  Moulin-Rouge  and  you  will  see  a  still 
clearer  object-lesson.  The  goods  in  the  music-halls  are 
displayed,  so  to  speak,  behind  glass,  in  a  shop  window ;  at 
the  Moulin-Rouge  they  are  on  the  open  booths  of  a  street 
market. 


126 


An  Actress  and  a  Play. 

IF  you  would  see  how  far  acting  can  go  in  the  direction  of 
greatness  without  ever  becoming  great,  go  to  the  Adelphi 
and  see  Miss  Olga  Nethersole  in  "  Sapho."  Do  not  con- 
cern yourself  much  with  the  play,  for  good  or  evil.  It  is 
Daudet's  novel,  adapted  by  Mr.  Clyde  Fitch,  with  the  aid 
of  the  French  adaptation,  in  which  Rejane  was  seen  last 
year  at  the  Coronet.  It  does  not  make  a  good  play,  but  I 
am  quite  unable  to  understand  why  it  brought  Miss 
Nethersole  into  trouble  with  the  guardians  of  the  stage 
morality  in  America.  Unless  the  mere  fact  of  a  collage  is 
not  to  be  assumed  on  the  stage,  there  is  nothing  even  faintly 
improper  in  it,  and  in  England,  at  all  events,  we  are  not 
unaccustomed  to  seeing  that  particular  form  of  domesticity 
on  the  stage.  The  piece  is  a  crude  piece,  meant  to  give 
emotional  opportunities  to  an  actress,  and  it  does  give  those 
opportunities.  How  does  Miss  Nethersole  grapple  with 
them  ? 

Well,  I  find  it  difficult  to  say  why  she  is  so  good  and  no 
better.  She  begins  by  being  ordinary  and  affected  ;  gradually 
she  becomes  sincere,  interesting,  intense ;  then  she  becomes 
ordinary  again,  though  not  affected.  Towards  the  end  of 
the  second  act  she  woke  up  suddenly  for  a  few  moments, 
she  had  a  fine  outburst.  But  it  was  in  the  third  act  that 
she  was  really  good,  and  in  this  act  she  was  good  almost 
throughout.  Now  Rejane,  in  the  same  part,  was  wonderful 
from  the  first  moment  she  entered  the  door  to  the  last 
moment  when  she  closed  the  door  behind  her.  She  was 
most  wonderful,  of  course,  in  the  moments  of  crisis,  but 
127 


An  Actress  and  a  Play. 

she  held  one's  interest  all  the  time,  when  she  was  doing 
nothing,  merely  because  she  was  there.  That  is  what  an 
actress  should  do,  and  that  is  what  Miss  Nethersole  did  not 
do.  In  the  third  act,  it  is  true,  she  was  good  all  through 
the  long  scene  of  the  supper,  where  she  has  to  be  merely 
herself  at  ease  ;  but  she  was  conspicuously  poor  in  the 
really  very  significant  scene  in  the  second  act,  when  Sapho 
comes  to  Jean  Gaussin's  rooms  with  the  intention  of  remain- 
ing. In  that  scene  Rejane  held  one  breathless.  It  was  not 
the  calculated  seduction  of  a  man  by  a  designing  woman  (as  in 
"  Zaza  "),  it  was  a  loving  woman  to  whom  it  is  life  or  death 
to  be  loved.  Miss  Nethersole  was  the  "  girl  from  Maxim's," 
acting  her  own  part.  In  the  third  act  she  was  quite  human, 
she  was  so  simple,  direct,  and  powerful  as  to  be  really  con- 
vincing ;  and  yet,  what  was  it  that  was  wanting,  if  one 
compared  her  with  Rejane  ?  When  I  saw  Rejane  I  felt  an 
actual  physical  sensation ;  the  woman  took  me  by  the 
throat ;  I  felt,  literally,  as  if  some  one  were  appealing  straight 
to  me ;  I  seemed  to  be  guilty  of  her  tears.  Miss  Nether- 
sole forced  me  to  admire  her,  to  accept  her  ;  I  felt  that  she 
was  very  real,  and,  as  I  felt  it,  I  said  to  myself:  u  She  is 
acting  splendidly."  With  Rejane  it  was  the  feeling  that 
had  possessed  me  ;  here  I  was  conscious  that  a  certain  feeling 
was  being  appealed  to,  and  I  recognised  the  talent  of  the 
actress. 

After  seeing  this  play,  which  exists  only  to  be  acted,  it 
was  an  interesting  contrast  to  see,  at  the  Stage  Society's 
performance  in  the  Royalty  Theatre,  a  play  which  exists  at 
least  as  much  in  the  book  as  on  the  stage,  Ibsen's  "  Lady 
from  the  Sea."  I  wonder  whether  it  loses  a  little  in  its 
128 


An  Actress  and  a  Play. 

acceptance  of  those  narrow  limits  of  the  footlights  ?  That 
is  the  question  which  I  was  asking  myself  as  I  saw  the  really 
excellent  performance,  in  which  Miss  Janet  Achurch  was  at 
her  best,  fine,  subtle,  sensitive,  mysterious,  and  the  other 
people  were  for  the  most  part  quite  adequate.  The  play 
is,  according  to  the  phrase,  a  problem-play,  but  the  problem 
is  the  problem  of  all  Ibsen's  plays :  the  desire  of  life,  the 
attraction  of  life,  the  mystery  of  life.  Only,  we  see  the 
eternal  question  under  a  new,  strange  aspect.  The  sea  calls 
to  the  blood  of  this  woman,  who  has  married  into  an  inland 
home  ;  and  the  sea-cry,  which  is  the  desire  of  more  abundant 
life,  of  unlimited  freedom,  of  an  unknown  ecstasy,  takes 
form  in  a  vague  Stranger,  who  has  talked  to  her  of  the  sea- 
birds  in  a  voice  like  their  own,  and  whose  eyes  seem  to  her 
to  have  the  green  changes  of  the  sea.  It  is  an  admirable 
symbol,  but  when  a  bearded  gentleman  with  a  knapsack  on 
his  back  climbs  over  the  garden  wall  and  says  :  "  I  have 
come  for  you  ;  are  you  coming  ?  "  and  then  tells  the  woman 
that  he  has  read  of  her  marriage  in  the  newspaper,  it  seemed 
as  if  the  symbol  had  lost  a  good  deal  of  its  meaning  in  the 
gross  act  of  taking  flesh.  The  play  haunts  one,  as  it  is, 
but  it  would  have  haunted  one  with  a  more  subtle  witch- 
craft if  the  Stranger  had  never  appeared  upon  the  stage. 
Just  as  Wagner  insisted  upon  a  crawling  and  howling  dragon, 
a  Fafner  with  a  name  of  his  own  and  a  considerable  presence, 
so  Ibsen  brings  the  supernatural  or  the  subconscious  a  little 
crudely  into  the  midst  of  his  persons  of  the  drama.  To 
use  symbol,  and  not  to  use  it  in  the  surprising  and  inevitable 
way  of  the  poet,  is  to  fall  into  the  dry,  impotent  sin  of 
allegory. 
129  i 


•  A  Comedy  of  Fine  Shades. 

IN  "  The  Bishop's  Move,"  a  comedy  in  three  acts  by  John 
Oliver  Hobbes  and  Murray  Carson,  given  at  a  special  per- 
formance at  the  Garrick  Theatre,  we  have  an  attempt  to  do 
artistically  what  so  many  writers  for  the  stage  have  done 
without  thinking  about  art  at  all.  There  can  be  little 
doubt  that  the  story  is  due  to  Mr.  Carson,  and  that  the 
writing  is  Mrs.  Craigie's.  Mrs.  Craigie,  no  doubt,  has 
given  her  own  turn  to  the  story,  which  deals,  in  her 
favourite  way,  with  priestly  and  aristocratic  persons,  but 
the  actual  point  of  sentiment  out  of  which  the  story 
is  made  is  scarcely  likely  to  have  been  deliberately  chosen 
by  a  writer  who  has  usually  set  herself  problems  at  once 
harder  and  more  interesting.  Will  the  young  man  choose 
the  sweet  young  woman  or  the  fascinating  older  woman,  or, 
as  his  novice's  dress  suggests,  the  church  ?  Will  the  Bishop 
move  in  favour  of  the  one  or  the  other  lady,  and  will  his 
move  be  determined  by  the  temporal  interests  of  his  abbey 
or  by  the  real  interests  of  these  three  people  ?  The  "  usual 
three  "  stand  in  the  usual  relation  to  one  another ;  the  deus 
ex  machind  only  differs  from  others  of  his  kind  in  being  a 
Catholic  Bishop ;  the  situation,  in  a  word,  is  the  normal 
situation  of  "  genteel  comedy."  We  know  how  either  of 
the  captains  of  the  drama,  Captain  Marshall  or  Captain 
Hood,  would  handle  it ;  we  see  the  false  sentiment,  the 
tears,  the  solemn  absurdity  of  the  whole  thing.  Also,  we 
hear  the  shouts  of  pit  and  gallery  at  the  fall  of  every 
curtain.  How  has  Mrs.  Craigie  handled  this  very  ordinary 
material  ?  The  story  she  has  taken  frankly,  not  rejecting 
130 


A  Comedy  of  Fine  Shades. 

the  aid  of  her  symbolical  chess-board,  on  which  people 
literally  move  pieces  at  the  critical  moments  of  the  play. 
She  has  used  all  sorts  of  clever  little  devices  for  making 
people  do  something  definite  on  the  stage,  one  of  the  most 
difficult  of  the  playwright's  tasks  in  modern  drama.  There 
are  organ  pipes  to  be  taken  to  pieces,  and  we  are  shown  in 
one  act  the  front  of  the  organ,  resting  against  the  side- 
wall  of  the  drawing-room,  and  in  another  act  the  back  of 
the  organ,  on  the  other  side  of  the  wall,  in  the  morning- 
room.  There  is  an  amateur  printing-press,  and  a  marvel- 
lously disarranged  proof,  for  which  it  is  responsible.  There 
are  deputations,  illuminated  addresses,  a  fresco,  a  pulpit. 
So  far  we  have  got  nothing  which  the  professional  play- 
wright could  not  have  given  us.  But  what  Mrs.  Craigie 
has  done  is  to  give  us  good  writing  instead  of  bad,  delicate 
worldly  wisdom  instead  of  vague  sentiment  or  vague  cyni- 
cism, and  the  manners  of  society  instead  of  an  imitation  of 
some  remote  imitation  of  those  manners.  Her  people  are 
drawn  lightly,  but  they  are  drawn  with  a  sure  hand ;  they 
are  not  strung  up  to  any  tragic  heights  of  emotion,  but 
they  feel  and  think  and  speak  just  as  clever  people  of  our 
acquaintance  seem  to  feel  and  think,  and  certainly  speak, 
when  we  are  brought  into  not  too  poignant  relations  with 
them.  The  play  is  a  comedy,  and  the  situations  are  not 
allowed  to  get  beyond  the  control  of  good  manners.  We 
are  just  enough  interested  in  the  people  to  take  a  keen 
notice  of  what  they  are  doing  and  saying,  without  losing 
our  interest  in  the  game  as  a  game.  The  game  is  after  all 
the  thing,  and  the  skill  of  the  game.  When  the  pawns 
begin  to  cry  out  in  the  plaintive  way  of  pawns,  they  are 
131 


A  Comedy  of  Fine  Shades. 

hushed  before  they  become  disturbing.  Barbara,  the  young 
girl,  is  drawn  with  delicate  truth  to  nature,  and  one  has 
only  to  hear  her  when  she  lets  out  her  secret  so  ingenuously 
to  everybody  in  turn,  and  then  to  think  of  what  she  would 
have  been  if  we  had  come  upon  her  in  a  "  Second  in  Com- 
mand "  or  a  "  Sweet  and  Twenty."  The  shy  and  rather 
foolish  young  man  is  never  foolish  without  intention;  it 
never  occurs  to  the  Duchess  that  her  part  requires  her  to  be 
always  explaining  herself;  the  Bishop  allows  himself  the 
leisure  to  comment  with  wise  humour  on  his  fellow 
characters.  We  are  never  far  from  nature,  while  we  seem 
all  the  time  to  be  but  obeying  the  rules  of  the  game.  It 
is  in  this  power  to  play  the  game  on  its  own  artificial  lines, 
and  yet  to  play  with  pieces  made  scrupulously  after  the 
pattern  of  nature,  that  Mrs.  Craigie's  skill,  in  this  play, 
seems  to  me  to  consist. 

How  this  kind  of  work  will  appeal  to  the  general  public 
I  can  hardly  tell.  When  I  saw  "  Sweet  and  Twenty  "  on 
its  first  performance,  I  honestly  expected  the  audience  to 
burst  out  laughing.  On  the  contrary,  the  audience  thrilled 
with  delight,  and  audience  after  audience  went  on  indefi- 
nitely thrilling  with  delight.  If  the  caricature  of  the 
natural  emotions  can  give  so  much  pleasure,  will  a  delicate 
suggestion  of  them,  as  in  this  play,  ever  mean  very  much 
to  the  public  ?  When  humour  is  always  at  hand  to  keep 
pathos  in  its  place,  so  that  you  have  no  need  to  be  ashamed 
of  the  people  who  are  so  unconsciously  making  such  fools 
of  themselves,  can  one  expect  that  an  audience  will  be  at  all 
thankful  for  this  reserve,  this  rejection  of  the  easy  tribute 
of  tears  ?  I  am  afraid  the  general  public  cannot  do  without 
132 


A  Comedy  of  Fine  Shades. 

its  pocket  handkerchief,  to  stifle  laughter  or  to  stifle  sobs. 
Here  is  a  play  which  makes  no  demands  on  the  pocket 
handkerchief,  but  in  which  a  dramatic  writer  is  seen  treating 
the  real  people  of  the  audience  and  the  imaginary  people  of 
the  play  as  if  they  were  alike  ladies  and  gentlemen. 


Drama:   Professional  and  Unprofessional. 

LAST  week  gave  one  an  amusing  opportunity  of  contrasting 
the  merits  and  the  defects  of  the  professional  and  the 
unprofessional  kind  of  play.  "  The  Gay  Lord  Quex  "  was 
revived  at  the  Duke  of  York's  Theatre,  and  Mr.  Alexander 
produced  at  the  St.  James's  Theatre  a  play  called  "  The 
Finding  of  Nancy,"  which  had  been  chosen  by  the  com- 
mittee of  the  Playgoers'  Club  out  of  a  large  number  of 
plays  sent  in  for  competition.  The  writer,  Miss  Netta 
Syrett,  has  published  one  or  two  novels  or  collections  of 
stories  ;  but  this,  as  far  as  I  am  aware,  is  her  first  attempt 
at  a  play.  Both  plays  were  unusually  well  acted ;  Miss 
Irene  Vanbrugh  was  brilliant,  masterly,  and  effective  as 
Sophy  Fullgarney,  and  Mr.  Hare  admirably  sure  and 
finished  as  Lord  Quex  ;  while  Miss  Lilian  Braithwaite  has 
never  acted  so  well  as  in  the  part  of  Nancy,  and  Mr.  Aubrey 
Smith  was  quite  good  in  the  part  of  her  lover.  The  two 
plays,  therefore,  may  be  contrasted  without  the  necessity  of 
making  allowances  for  the  way  in  which  they  were  inter- 
preted on  the  stage. 

Mr.  Pinero  is  a  playwright  with  a  sharp  sense  of  the 
stage,  an  eye  for  what  is  telling,  a  cynical  intelligence  which 
is  much  more  interesting  than  the  uncertain  outlook  of 
most  of  our  playwrights.  He  has  no  breadth  of  view, 
but  he  has  a  clear  view ;  he  makes  his  choice  out  of  human 
nature  deliberately,  and  he  deals  in  his  own  way  with  the 
materials  that  he  selects.  Before  saying  to  himself:  what 
would  this  particular  person  say  or  do  in  these  circum- 
stances ?  he  says  to  himself :  what  would  it  be  effective  on 

'34 


Drama:   Professional  and  Unprofessional. 

the    stage   for   this  particular  person  to  do  or  say  ?      He 
suggests  nothing,  he  tells  you  all  he  knows  ;    he  cares  to 
know  nothing  but  what  immediately  concerns  the  purpose 
of  his  play.     The  existence  of  his  people  begins  and  ends 
with  their  first  and  last  speech  on  the  boards  ;    the  rest  is 
silence,  because  he  can  tell  you  nothing  about  it.     Sophy 
Fullgarney  is  a   remarkably  effective  character  as  a  stage- 
character,  but,  when  the   play  is  over,  we  know  no  more 
about  her  than  we  should  know  about  her  if  we  had  spied 
upon  her,  in  her  own  way,  from  behind  some  bush  or  key- 
hole.    We  have  seen  a  picturesque  and  amusing  exterior, 
and  that  is  all.     Lord  Quex  does  not,  I  suppose,  profess  to 
be  even  so  much  of  a  character  as  that,  and  the  other  people 
are   mere    "  humours,"    quite    amusing    in    their    cleverly 
contrasted  ways.     When  these  people  talk,  they  talk  with  an 
effort  to  be  natural  and  another  effort  to  be  witty ;  they  are 
never  sincere  and  without  self-consciousness ;  they  never  say 
inevitable  things,  only  things  that  are  effective  to  say.     And 
they  talk  in   poor  English.     Mr.   Pinero  has  no  sense  of 
style,    of  the    beauty   or   expressiveness   of   words.      His 
joking  is   forced  and  without  ideas ;    his  serious  writing  is 
common.     In  "The  Gay  Lord  Quex"   he  is  continually 
trying    to   impress    upon   his   audience   that    he    is    very 
audacious  and  distinctly  improper.     The  improprieties  are 
childish  in  the  innocence  of  their  vulgarity,  the  audacities 
are  no  more  than   trifling  lapses  of  taste.     He  shows  you 
the  interior  of  a  Duchess's  bedroom,  and  he  shows  you  the 
Duchess's  garter,  in  a  box  of  other  curiosities.     He  sets  his 
gentlemen  and  ladies  talking  in  the  allusive  style  which  you 
may  overhear  whenever  you  happen  to  be  passing  a  group 

'35 


Drama:   Professional  and  Unprofessional. 

_of  London  cabmen.  The  Duchess  has  written  in  her 
diary,  "  Warm  afternoon."  That  means  that  she  has 
spent  an  hour  with  her  lover.  Many  people  in  the 
audience  laugh.  All  the  cabmen  would  have  laughed. 

Now  look  for  a  moment  at  the  play  by  the  amateur  and 
the  woman.  It  is  not  a  satisfactory  play  as  a  whole,  it  is 
not  very  interesting  in  all  its  developments,  some  of  the 
best  opportunities  are  shirked,  some  of  the  characters  (all 
the  characters  who  are  men)  are  poor.  But,  in  the  first 
place,  it  is  well  written.  Those  people  speak  a  language 
which  is  nearer  to  the  language  of  real  life  than  that  used 
by  Mr.  Pinero,  and  when  they  make  jokes  there  is  generally 
some  humour  in  the  joke  and  some  intelligence  in  the 
humour.  They  have  ideas  and  they  have  feelings.  The 
ideas  and  the  feelings  are  not  always  combined  with  faultless 
logic  into  a  perfectly  clear  and  coherent  presentment  of 
character,  it  is  true.  But  from  time  to  time  we  get  some 
of  the  illusion  of  life.  From  time  to  time  something  is 
said  or  done  which  we  know  to  be  profoundly  true.  A 
woman  has  put  into  words  some  delicate  instinct  of  a 
woman's  soul.  Here  and  there  is  a  cry  of  the  flesh,  here 
and  there  a  cry  of  the  mind,  which  is  genuine,  which  is 
a  part  of  life.  Miss  Syrett  has  much  to  learn  if  she  is 
to  become  a  successful  dramatist,  and  she  has  not  as  yet 
shown  that  she  knows  men,  as  well  as  women ;  but  at 
least  she  has  begun  at  the  right  end.  She  has  begun 
with  human  nature  and  not  with  the  artifices  of  the  stage, 
she  has  thought  of  her  characters  as  people  before  thinking 
of  them  as  persons  of  the  drama,  she  has  something  to 
say  through  them,  they  are  not  mere  lines  in  a  pattern. 
136 


Drama:   Professional  and  Unprofessional. 

I  am  not  at  all  sure  that  she  has  the  makings  of  a 
dramatist,  or  that  if  she  writes  another  play  it  will  be 
better  than  this  one.  You  do  not  necessarily  get  to  your 
destination  by  taking  the  right  turning  at  the  beginning 
of  the  journey.  The  one  certain  thing  is  that  if  you  take 
the  wrong  turning  at  the  beginning,  and  follow  it  per- 
sistently, you  will  not  get  to  your  destination  at  all.  The 
playwright  who  writes  merely  for  the  stage,  who  squeezes 
the  breath  out  of  life  before  he  has  suited  it  to  his  purpose, 
is  at  the  best  only  playing  a  clever  game  with  us.  He  may 
amuse  us,  but  he  is  only  playing  ping-pong  with  the 
emotions.  And  that  is  why  we  should  welcome,  I  think, 
any  honest  attempt  to  deal  with  life  as  it  is,  even  if  life  as 
it  is  does  not  always  come  into  the  picture. 


'37 


M.  Capus  in  England. 

LAST  week  an  excellent  Parisian  company  from  the  Variet£s 
has  been  playing  "La  Veine "  of  M.  Alfred  Capus,  and 
this  week  it  is  playing  "  Les  Deux  Ecoles "  of  the  same 
entertaining  writer.  The  company  is  led  by  Mme.  Jeanne 
Granier,  an  actress  who  could  not  be  better  in  her  own  way 
unless  she  acquired  a  touch  of  genius,  and  she  has  no 
genius.  She  was  thoroughly  and  consistently  good,  she  was 
lifelike,  amusing,  never  out  of  key;  only,  while  she 
reminded  one  at  times  of  Rejane,  she  had  none  of  Rejane's 
magnetism,  none  of  Rejane's  exciting  naturalness. 

The  whole  company  is  one  of  excellent  quality,  which 
goes  together  like  the  different  parts  of  a  piece  of  machinery. 
There  is  Mme.  Marie  Magnier,  so  admirable  as  an  old  lady 
of  that  good,  easy-going,  intelligent,  French  type.  There  is 
Mile.  Lavalli&re,  with  her  brilliant  eyes  and  her  little 
canaille  voice,  vulgarly  exquisite.  There  is  M.  Numes,  M. 
Guy,  M.  Guitry.  M.  Guitry  is  the  French  equivalent  of  Mr. 
Fred  Kerr,  with  all  the  difference  that  that  change  of 
nationality  means.  His  slow  manner,  his  delaying  panto- 
mime, his  hard,  persistent  eyes,  his  uninflected  voice,  made 
up  a  type  which  I  have  never  seen  more  faithfully  presented 
on  the  stage.  And  there  is  M.  Brasseur.  He  is  a  kind  of 
French  Arthur  Roberts,  but  without  any  of  that  extravagant 
energy  which  carries  the  English  comedian  triumphantly 
through  all  his  absurdities.  M.  Brasseur  is  preposterously 
natural,  full  of  aplomb  and  impertinence.  He  never  flags, 
never  hesitates  ;  it  is  impossible  to  take  him  seriously,  as 
we  say  of  delightful,  mischievous  people  in  real  life. 
138 


M.  Capus  in  England. 

I  have  been  amused  to  see  a  discussion  in  the  papers  as 
to  whether  "  La  Veine  "  is  a  fit  play  to  be  presented  to  the 
English  public.  "  Max"  has  defended  it  in  his  own  way  in 
the  Saturday  <J^eviewt  and  I  hasten  to  say  that  I  quite  agree 
with  his  defence.  Above  all,  I  agree  with  him  when  he 
says :  "  Let  our  dramatic  critics  reserve  their  indignation 
for  those  other  plays,  in  which  the  characters  are  self- 
conscious,  winkers  and  gigglers  over  their  own  misconduct, 
taking  us  into  their  confidence,  and  inviting  us  to  wink  and 
giggle  with  them."  There,  certainly,  is  the  offence  ;  there 
is  a  kind  of  vulgarity  which  seems  native  to  the  lower 
English  mind  and  to  the  lower  English  stage.  M.  Capus  is 
not  a  moralist,  but  it  is  not  needful  to  be  a  moralist.  He 
is  a  skilful  writer  for  the  stage,  who  takes  an  amiable,  some- 
what superficial,  quietly  humorous  view  of  things,  and  he 
takes  people  as  he  finds  them  in  a  particular  section  of  the 
upper  and  lower  middle  classes  in  Paris,  not  going  further 
than  the  notion  which  they  have  of  themselves,  and  present- 
ing that  simply,  without  comment.  We  get  a  foolish 
young  millionaire  and  a  foolish  young  person  in  a  flower 
shop,  who  take  up  a  collage  together  in  the  most  casual  way 
possible,  and  they  are  presented  as  two  very  ordinary  people, 
neither  better  nor  worse  than  a  great  many  other  ordinary 
people,  who  do  or  do  not  do  much  the  same  thing.  They 
at  least  do  not  "  wink  or  giggle  "  ;  they  take  things  with 
the  utmost  simplicity,  and  they  call  upon  us  to  imitate  their 
bland  unconsciousness. 

"  La  Veine  "  is  a  study  of  luck,  in  the  person  of  a  very- 
ordinary  man,  not  more  intelligent  or  more  selfish  or  more 
attractive  than  the  average,  but  one  who  knows  when  to 


M.  Capus  in  England. 

take  the  luck  which  comes  his  way.  The  few,  quite 
average,  incidents  of  the  play  are  put  together  with  neat- 
ness and  probability,  and  without  sensational  effects,  or 
astonishing  curtains ;  the  people  are  very  natural  and 
probable,  very  amusing  in  their  humors,  and  they  often 
say  humorous  things,  not  in  so  many  set  words,  but  by  a 
clever  adjustment  of  natural  and  probable  nothings. 
Throughout  the  play  there  is  an  amiable  and  entertaining 
common  sense  which  never  becomes  stage  convention  ;  these 
people  talk  like  real  people,  only  much  more  a-propos. 

In  "  Les  Deux  Ecoles  "  the  philosophy  which  could  be 
discerned  in  "  La  Veine,"  that  of  taking  things  as  they  are 
and  taking  them  comfortably,  is  carried  to  a  still  further 
development.  I  am  prepared  to  be  told  that  the  whole 
philosophy  is  horribly  immoral ;  perhaps  it  is ;  but  the 
play,  certainly,  is  not.  It  is  vastly  amusing,  its  naughti- 
ness is  so  na'fve,  so  tactfully  frank,  that  even  the  American 
daughter  might  take  her  mother  to  see  it,  without  fear  of 
corrupting  the  innocence  of  age.  "  On  peut  tres  bien 
vivre  sans  etre  la  plus  heureuse  des  femmes  " :  that  is  one 
of  the  morals  of  the  piece  ;  and,  the  more  you  think  over 
questions  of  conduct,  the  more  you  realise  that  you  might 
just  as  well  not  have  thought  about  them  at  all,  might  be 
another.  The  incidents  by  which  these  excellent  morals 
are  driven  home  are  incidents  of  the  same  order  as  those 
in  "  La  Veine/'  and  not  less  entertaining.  The  mounting, 
simple  as  it  was,  was  admirably  planned  ;  the  stage-pictures 
full  of  explicit  drollery.  And,  as  before,  the  whole  com- 
pany worked  with  the  effortless  unanimity  of  a  perfect  piece 
of  machinery. 
140 


M.  Capus  in  England. 

A  few  days  after  seeing  "  La  Veine,"  I  went  to 
Wyndham's  Theatre  to  see  a  revival  of  Sir  Francis 
Burnand's  "  Betsy."  "  Betsy,"  of  course,  is  adapted  from 
the  French,  though,  by  an  accepted  practice  which  seems  to 
me  dishonest,  in  spite  of  its  acceptance,  that  fact  is  not 
mentioned  on  the  play-bill.  But  the  form  is  undoubtedly 
English,  very  English.  What  vulgarity,  what  pointless 
joking,  what  pitiable  attempts  to  serve  up  old  impromptus 
rechauffes !  I  found  it  impossible  to  stay  to  the  end. 
Some  actors,  capable  of  better  things,  worked  hard ;  there 
was  a  terrible  air  of  effort  in  these  attempts  to  be  sprightly 
in  fetters,  and  in  rusty  fetters.  Think  of  "  La  Veine  "  at 
its  worst,  and  then  think  of  "Betsy"!  I  must  not  ask 
you  to  contrast  the  actors  ;  it  would  be  almost  unfair.  We 
have  not  a  company  of  comedians  in  England  who  can  be 
compared  for  a  moment  with  Mme.  Jeanne  Granier's  com- 
pany. We  have  here  and  there  a  good  actor,  a  brilliant 
comic  actor,  in  one  kind  or  another  of  emphatic  comedy ; 
but  wherever  two  or  three  comedians  meet  on  the  English 
stage,  they  immediately  begin  to  check-mate,  or  to  outbid, 
or  to  shout  down  one  another.  No  one  is  content,  or  no 
one  is  able,  to  take  his  place  in  an  orchestra  in  which  it  is 
not  allotted  to  every  one  to  play  a  solo. 


141 


A  Double  Enigma. 

WHEN  it  was  announced  that  Mrs.  Tree  was  to  give  a 
translation  of  "  L'Enigme "  of  M.  Paul  Hervieu  at 
Wyndham's  Theatre,  the  play  was  announced  under  the 
title  "  Which  ?  "  and  as  "  Which  ?  "  it  appeared  on  the 
placards.  Suddenly  new  placards  appeared,  with  a  new 
title,  not  at  all  appropriate  to  the  piece,  "  Caesar's  Wife." 
Rumours  of  a  late  decision,  or  indecision,  of  the  censor 
were  heard.  The  play  had  not  been  prohibited,  but  it  had 
been  adapted  to  more  polite  ears.  But  how  ?  That  was 
the  question.  I  confess  that  to  me  the  question  seemed 
insoluble.  Here  is  the  situation  as  it  exists  in  the  play ; 
nothing  could  be  simpler,  more  direct,  more  difficult  to 
tamper  with.  Two  brothers,  Raymond  and  Gerard  de 
Gourgiran,  are  in  their  country  house,  with  their  two  wives, 
Giselle  and  L6onore,  and  two  guests,  the  old  Marquis  de 
Neste  and  the  young  M.  de  Vivarce.  The  brothers  surprise 
Vivarce  on  the  stairs :  was  he  coming  from  the  room  of 
Giselle  or  of  Leonore  ?  The  women  are  summoned  ;  both 
deny  everything ;  it  is  impossible  for  the  audience,  as  for 
the  husbands,  to  come  to  any  conclusion.  A  shot  is  heard 
outside :  Vivarce  has  killed  himself,  so  that  he  may  save 
the  reputation  of  the  woman  he  loves.  Then  the  self- 
command  of  Leonore  gives  way ;  she  avows  all  in  a  piercing 
shriek.  After  that  there  is  some  unnecessary  moralising 
("  La-bas  un  cadavre  !  Ici,  des  sanglots  de  captive  !  "  and 
the  like),  but  the  play  is  over. 

Now,  the  situation  is  perfectly  precise  ;  it  is  not,  perhaps, 
very  intellectually  significant,  but  there  it  is,  a  striking 
142 


A  Double  Enigma. 

dramatic  situation.  Above  all,  it  is  frank ;  there  are 
no  evasions,  no  sentimental  lies,  no  hypocrisies  before  facts. 
If  adultery  may  not  be  referred  to  on  the  English  stage 
except  at  the  Gaiety,  between  a  wink  and  a  laugh,  then  such 
a  play  becomes  wholly  impossible.  Not  at  all :  listen. 
We  are  told  to  suppose  that  Vivarce  and  Leonore  have  had 
a  possibly  quite  harmless  flirtation  ;  and  instead  of  Vivarce 
being  found  on  his  way  from  Leonore's  room,  he  has  merely 
been  walking  with  Leonore  in  the  garden :  at  midnight, 
remember,  and  after  her  husband  has  gone  to  bed.  In 
order  to  lead  up  to  this,  a  preposterous  speech  has  been 
put  into  the  mouth  of  the  Marquis  de  Neste,  an  idiotic 
rhapsody  about  love  and  the  stars,  and  I  forget  what  else, 
which  I  imagine  we  are  to  take  as  an  indication  of  Vivarce's 
sentiments  as  he  walks  with  Leonore  in  the  garden  at  mid- 
night. But  all  these  precautions  are  in  vain  ;  the  audience 
is  never  deceived  for  an  instant.  A  form  of  words  has 
been  used,  like  the  form  of  words  by  which  certain  lies 
become  technically  truthful.  The  whole  point  of  the  play  : 
has  a  husband  the  right  to  kill  his  wife  or  his  wife's  lover 
if  he  discovers  that  his  wife  has  been  unfaithful  to  him  ?  is 
obviously  not  a  question  of  whether  a  husband  may  kill  a 
gentleman  who  has  walked  with  his  wife  in  the  garden, 
even  after  midnight.  The  force  of  the  original  situation 
comes  precisely  from  the  certainty  of  the  fact  and  the 
uncertainty  of  the  person  responsible  for  it.  "  Cassar's 
Wife  "  may  lend  her  name  for  a  screen ;  the  screen  is  no 
disguise  ;  the  play  remains  what  it  was  in  its  moral  bearing  ; 
a  dramatic  stupidity  has  been  imported  into  it,  that  is  all. 
Here,  then,  in  addition  to  the  enigma  of  the  play,  is  a 

H3 


A  Double  Enigma. 

second,  not  so  easily  explained,  enigma :  the  enigma  of  the 
censor,  and  of  why  he  "  moves  in  a  mysterious  way  his 
wonders  to  perform."  The  play,  I  must  confess,  does  not 
seem  to  me,  as  it  seems  to  certain  French  critics,  "  une  piece 
qui  tient  du  chef-d'ceuvre  ...  la  tragedie  des  maitres  antiques 
et  de  Shakespeare."  To  me  it  is  rather  an  insubstantial  kind 
of  ingenuity,  ingenuity  turning  in  a  circle.  As  a  tragic 
episode,  the  dramatisation  of  a  striking  incident,  it  has  force 
and  simplicity,  the  admirable  quality  of  directness.  Occa- 
sionally the  people  are  too  eager  to  express  the  last  shade 
of  the  author's  meaning,  as  in  the  conversation  between 
Neste  and  Vivarce,  when  the  latter  decides  to  commit 
suicide,  or  in  the  supplementary  comments  when  the  action 
is  really  at  an  end.  But  I  have  never  seen  a  piece  which 
seemed  to  have  been  written  so  kindly  and  so  consistently 
for  the  benefit  of  the  actors.  There  are  six  characters  of 
equal  importance ;  and  each  in  turn  absorbs  the  whole  flood 
of  the  limelight. 

The  other  piece  which  made  Saturday  evening  interesting 
was  a  version  of  "  Au  Telephone,"  one  of  Antoine's  recent 
successes  at  his  theatre  in  Paris.  It  was  brutal  and  realistic, 
it  made  just  the  appeal  of  an  accident  really  seen,  and, 
so  far  as  success  in  horrifying  one  is  concerned,  it  was  suc- 
cessful. A  husband  hearing  the  voice  of  his  wife  through 
the  telephone,  at  the  moment  when  some  murderous  ruffians 
are  breaking  into  the  house,  hearing  her  last  cry,  and  help- 
less to  aid  her,  is  as  ingeniously  unpleasant  a  situation  as 
can  well  be  imagined.  It  is  brought  before  us  with  un- 
questionable skill ;  it  makes  us  as  uncomfortable  as  it 
wishes  to  make  us.  But  such  a  situation  has  absolutely  no 

144 


A  Double  Enigma. 

artistic  value,  because  terror  without  beauty  and  without 
significance  is  not  worth  causing.  When  the  husband,  with 
his  ear  at  the  telephone,  hears  his  wife  tell  him  that  some  one 
is  forcing  the  window-shutters  with  a  crowbar,  we  feel,  it 
is  true,  a  certain  sympathetic  suspense ;  but  compare  this 
crude  onslaught  on  the  nerves  with  the  profound  and 
delicious  terror  that  we  experience  when,  in  "La  Mort  de 
Tintagiles "  of  Maeterlinck,  an  invisible  force  pushes  the 
door  softly  open,  a  force  intangible  and  irresistible  as  death. 
In  his  acting  Mr.  Charles  Warner  was  powerful,  thrilling ; 
it  would  be  difficult  to  say,  under  the  circumstances,  that 
he  was  extravagant,  for  what  extravagance,  under  the  circum- 
stances, would  be  improbable  ?  He  had  not,  no  doubt, 
what  I  see  described  as  "  le  jeu  simple  et  terrible  "  of  Antoine, 
a  dry,  hard,  intellectual  grip  on  horror ;  he  had  the  ready 
abandonment  to  emotion  of  the  average  emotional  man. 
Mr.  Warner  has  an  irritating  voice  and  manner,  but  he  has 
emotional  power,  not  fine  nor  subtle,  but  genuine ;  he  feels, 
and  he  makes  you  feel.  He  has  the  quality,  in  short,  of  the 
play  itself,  but  a  quality  more  tolerable  in  the  actor,  who  is 
concerned  only  with  the  rendering  of  a  given  emotion,  than 
in  the  playwright,  whose  business  it  is  to  choose,  heighten, 
and  dignify  the  emotion  which  he  gives  to  him  to  render. 


Three  Problem  Plays. 

I.   "  The  Marrying  of  Ann  Leete." 

IT  was  for  the  production  of  such  plays  as  Mr.  Granville 
Barker's  that  the  Stage  Society  was  founded,  and  it  is  doing 
good  service  to  the  drama  in  producing  them.  "  The 
Marrying  of  Ann  Leete,"  which  was  performed  yesterday 
afternoon  at  the  Royalty  Theatre,  is  the  cleverest  and  most 
promising  new  play  that  I  have  seen  for  a  long  time  ;  but  it 
cannot  be  said  to  have  succeeded  even  with  the  Stage  Society 
audience,  and  no  ordinary  theatrical  manager  is  very  likely 
to  produce  it.  I  am  told  that  the  author  is  a  man  of 
twenty-three  or  twenty-four,  and  that  he  has  been  an  actor 
for  many  years.  He  is  young  ;  his  play  is  immature,  too 
crowded  with  people,  too  knotted  up  with  motives,  too 
inconclusive  in  effect.  He  knows  the  stage,  and  his  know- 
ledge has  enabled  him  to  use  the  stage  for  his  own  purposes, 
inventing  a  kind  of  technique  of  his  own,  doing  one  or  two 
things  which  have  never,  or  never  so  deftly,  been  done 
before.  But  he  is  something  besides  all  that ;  he  can  think, 
he  can  write,  and  he  can  suggest  real  men  and  women.  The 
play  opens  in  the  dark,  and  remains  for  some  time  brilliantly 
ambiguous.  People,  late  eighteenth-century  people,  talk 
with  bewildering  abruptness,  not  less  bewildering  point ; 
they,  their  motives,  their  characters,  swim  slowly  into  day- 
light. Some  of  the  dialogue  is,  as  the  writer  says  of 
politics,  "a  game  for  clever  children,  women,  and  fools"; 
it  is  a  game  demanding  close  attention.  A  courtly  indolence, 
an  intellectual  blackguardism,  is  in  the  air ;  people  walk, 
146 


Three  Problem  Plays. 

as  it  seems,  aimlessly  in  and  out,  and  the  game  goes  on ;  it 
fills  one  with  excitement,  the  excitement  of  following  a 
trail.  It  is  a  trail  of  ideas,  these  people  think,  and  they  act 
because  they  have  thought.  They  know  the  words  they 
use,  they  use  them  with  deliberation,  their  hearts  are  in 
their  words.  Their  actions,  indeed,  are  disconcerting  ;  but 
these  people,  they  and  their  disconcerting  actions,  are 
interesting,  hold  one's  mind  in  suspense. 

Mr.  Granville  Barker  has  tried  to  tell  the  whole  history 
of  a  family,  and  he  interests  us  in  every  member  of  that 
family.  He  plays  them  like  chessmen,  and  their  moves 
excite  us  as  chess  excites  the  mind.  They  express  ideas  ; 
the  writer  has  thought  out  their  place  in  the  scheme  of 
things,  and  he  has  put  his  own  faculty  of  thinking  into  their 
heads.  They  talk  for  effect,  or  rather  for  disguise ;  it  is 
part  of  their  keen  sense  of  the  game.  They  talk  at  cross- 
purposes,  as  they  wander  in  and  out  of  the  garden  terrace  ; 
they  plan  out  their  lives,  and  life  comes  and  surprises  them 
by  the  way.  Then  they  speak  straight  out  of  their  hearts, 
sometimes  crudely,  sometimes  with  a  naivete  which  seems 
laughable ;  and  they  act  on  sudden  impulses,  accepting  the 
consequences  when  they  come.  They  live  an  artificial  life, 
knowing  lies  to  be  lies,  and  choosing  them ;  they  are 
civilised,  they  try  to  do  their  duty  by  society ;  only,  at  every 
moment,  some  ugly  gap  opens  in  the  earth,  right  in  their 
path,  and  they  have  to  stop,  consider,  choose  a  new  direction. 
They  seem  to  go  their  own  way,  almost  without  guiding  ; 
and  indeed  may  have  escaped  almost  literally  out  of  their 
author's  hands.  The  last  scene  is  an  admirable  episode,  a 
new  thing  on  the  stage,  full  of  truth  within  its  own  limits ; 

H7 


Three  Problem  Plays. 

but  it  is  an  episode,  not  a  conclusion,  much  less  a  solution. 
Mr.  Barker  can  write  :  he  writes  in  short,  sharp  sentences, 
which  go  off  like  pistol-shots,  and  he  keeps  up  the  firing, 
from  every  corner  of  the  stage.  He  brings  his  people  on 
and  off  with  an  unconventionality  which  comes  of  knowing 
the  resources  of  the  theatre,  and  of  being  unfettered  by  the 
traditions  of  its  technique.  The  scene  with  the  gardener  in 
the  second  act  has  extraordinary  technical  merit,  and  it  has 
the  art  which  conceals  its  art.  There  are  other  inventions  in 
the  play,  not  all  quite  so  convincing.  Sometimes  Mr.  Barker, 
in  doing  the  right  or  the  clever  thing,  does  it  just  not  quite 
strongly  enough  to  carry  it  against  opposition.  The  oppo- 
sition is  the  firm  and  narrow  mind  of  the  British  playgoer. 
Such  plays  as  Mr.  Barker's  are  apt  to  annoy  without  crushing. 
The  artist,  who  is  yet  an  imperfect  artist,  bewilders  the 
world  with  what  is  novel  in  his  art ;  the  great  artist  con- 
vinces the  world.  Mr.  Barker  is  young :  he  will  come  to 
think  with  more  depth  and  less  tumult ;  he  will  come  to  work 
with  less  prodigality  and  more  mastery  of  means.  But  he 
has  energy  already,  and  a  sense  of  what  is  absurd  and  honest 
in  the  spectacle  of  this  game,  in  which  the  pawns  seem  to 
move  of  themselves. 

II.  "  The  New  Idol." 

IT  was  an  interesting  experiment  on  the  part  of  the  Stage 
Society  to  give  a  translation  of  "La  Nouvelle  Idole,"  one  of 
those  pieces  by  which  M.  Francois  de  Curel  has  reached  that 
very  actual  section  of  the  French  public  which  is  interested  in 
ideas.  "The  New  Idol"  is  a  modern  play  of  the  most 
148 


Three  Problem  Plays. 

characteristically  modern  type ;  its  subject-matter  is  largely 
medical,  it  deals  with  the  treatment  of  cancer  ;  we  are  shown 
a  doctor's  laboratory,  with  a  horrible  elongated  diagram  of  the 
inside  of  the  human  body  ;  a  young  girl's  lungs  are  sounded 
in  the  doctor's  drawing-room ;  nearly  every  character  talks 
science,  and  very  little  but  science.  When  they  cease  talking 
science,  which  they  talk  well,  with  earnestness  and  with 
knowledge,  and  try  to  talk  love  or  intrigue,  they  talk  badly, 
as  if  they  were  talking  of  things  which  they  knew  nothing 
about.  Now,  personally,  this  kind  of  talk  does  not  interest 
me ;  it  makes  me  feel  uncomfortable.  But  1  am  ready  to 
admit  that  it  is  justified  if  I  find  that  the  dramatic  move- 
ment of  the  play  requires  it,  that  it  is  itself  an  essential  part 
of  the  action.  In  "  The  New  Idol "  I  think  this  is  partly 
the  case.  The  other  medical  play  which  has  lately  been 
disturbing  Paris,  "  Les  Avaries,"  does  not  seem  to  me  to 
fulfil  this  condition  at  any  moment :  it  is  a  pamphlet  from 
beginning  to  end,  it  is  not  a  satisfactory  pamphlet,  and  it 
has  no  other  excuse  for  existence.  But  M.  de  Curel  has 
woven  his  problem  into  at  least  a  semblance  of  action  ;  the 
play  is  not  a  mere  discussion  of  irresistible  physical  laws ; 
the  will  enters  into  the  problem,  and  will  fights  against  will, 
and  against  not  quite  irresistible  physical  laws.  The  sugges- 
tion of  love  interests,  which  come  to  nothing,  and  have  no 
real  bearing  on  the  main  situation,  seems  to  me  a  mistake  ; 
it  complicates  things,  things  which  must  appear  to  us  so  very 
real  if  we  are  to  accept  them  at  all,  with  rather  a  theatrical 
kind  of  complication.  M.  de  Curel  is  more  a  thinker  than 
a  dramatist,  as  he  has  shown  lately  in  the  very  original, 
interesting,  impossible  "Fille  Sauvage."  He  grapples  with 
149 


Three  Problem  Plays. 

serious  matters  seriously,  and  he  argues  well,  with  a  closely 
woven  structure  of  arguments ;  some  of  them  bringing  a 
kind  of  hard  and  naked  poetry  out  of  mere  closeness  of 
thinking  and  closeness  of  seeing.  In  "  The  New  Idol  " 
there  is  some  dialogue,  real  dialogue,  natural  give-and-take, 
about  the  fear  of  death  and  the  horror  of  indestructibility 
(a  variation  on  one  of  the  finest  of  Coventry  Patmore's  odes) 
which  seemed  to  me  admirable  :  it  held  the  audience  because 
it  was  direct  speech,  expressing  a  universal  human  feeling  in 
the  light  of  a  vivid  individual  crisis.  But  such  writing  as 
this  was  rare ;  for  the  most  part  it  was  the  problem  itself 
which  insisted  on  occupying  our  attention,  or,  distinct  from 
this,  the  too  theatrical  characters. 

III.   "  Mrs.  Warren's  Profession." 

THE  Stage  Society  has  shown  the  courage  of  its  opinions 
by  giving  an  unlicensed  play,  "  Mrs.  Warren's  Profession," 
one  of  the  "  unpleasant  plays "  of  Mr.  George  Bernard 
Shaw,  at  the  theatre  of  the  New  Lyric  Club.  It  was  well 
acted,  with  the  exception  of  two  of  the  characters,  and  the 
part  of  Mrs.  Warren  was  played  by  Miss  Fanny  Brough, 
one  of  the  cleverest  actresses  on  the  English  stage,  with 
remarkable  ability.  The  action  was  a  little  cramped  by  the 
smallness  of  the  stage,  but,  for  all  that,  the  play  was  seen 
under  quite  fair  conditions,  conditions  under  which  it  could 
be  judged  as  an  acting  play  and  as  a  work  of  art.  It  is 
brilliantly  clever,  with  a  close,  detective  cleverness,  all  made 
up  of  merciless  logic  and  unanswerable  common  sense.  The 
principal  characters  are  well  drawn,  the  scenes  are  constructed 
150 


Three  Problem  Plays. 

with  a  great  deal  of  theatrical  skill,  the  dialogue  is  telling, 
the  interest  is  held  throughout.  To  say  that  the  characters, 
without  exception,  are  ugly  in  their  vice  and  ugly  in  their 
virtue  ;  that  they  all  have,  men  and  women,  something  of 
the  cad  in  them ;  that  their  language  is  the  language  of 
vulgar  persons,  is,  perhaps,  only  to  say  that  Mr.  Shaw  has 
chosen,  for  artistic  reasons,  to  represent  such  people  just  as 
they  are.  But  there  is  something  more  to  be  said.  "  Mrs. 
Warren's  Profession  "  is  not  a  representation  of  life  ;  it  is 
a  discussion  about  life.  Now,  discussion  on  the  stage  may 
be  interesting.  Why  not  ?  Discussion  is  the  most  interest- 
ing thing  in  the  world,  off  the  stage ;  it  is  the  only  thing 
that  makes  an  hour  pass  vividly  in  society ;  but  when 
discussion  ends  art  has  not  begun.  It  is  interesting  to  see  a 
sculptor  handling  bits  of  clay,  sticking  them  on  here, 
scraping  them  off  there  ;  but  that  is  only  the  interest  of  a 
process.  When  he  has  finished  I  will  consider  whether  his 
figure  is  well  or  ill  done  ;  until  he  has  finished  I  can  have  no 
opinion  about  it.  It  is  the  same  thing  with  discussion  on 
the  stage.  The  subject  of  Mr.  Shaw's  discussion  is  what  is 
called  a  "  nasty "  one.  That  is  neither  here  nor  there, 
though  it  may  be  pointed  out  that  there  is  no  essential 
difference  between  the  problem  that  he  discusses  and  the 
problem  that  is  at  the  root  of  "  The  Second  Mrs.  Tan- 
queray." 

But  Mr.  Shaw,  I  believe,  is  never  without  his  polemical 
intentions,  and  I  should  like,  for  a  moment,  to  ask  whether 
his  discussion  of  his  problem,  taken  on  its  own  merits,  is 
altogether  the  best  way  to  discuss  things.  Mr.  Shaw  has 
an  ideal  of  life :  he  asks  that  men  and  women  should  be 


Three  Problem  Plays. 

perfectly  reasonable,  that  they  should  clear  their  minds  of 
cant,  and  speak  out  everything  that  is  in  their  minds.  He 
asks  for  cold  and  clear  logic,  and  when  he  talks  about  right 
and  wrong  he  is  really  talking  about  right  and  wrong  logic. 
Now  logic  is  not  the  mainspring  of  every  action,  nor  is 
justice  only  the  inevitable  working  out  of  an  equation. 
Humanity,  as  Mr.  Shaw  sees  it,  moves  by  clockwork ;  and 
must  be  regulated  as  a  watch  is,  and  praised  or  blamed 
simply  in  proportion  to  its  exactitude  in  keeping  time. 
Humanity,  as  Mr.  Shaw  knows,  does  not  move  by  clockwork, 
and  the  ultimate  justice  will  have  to  take  count  of  more 
exceptions  and  irregularities  than  Mr.  Shaw  takes  count  of. 
There  is  a  great  living  writer  who  has  brought  to  bear  on 
human  problems  as  consistent  a  logic  as  Mr.  Shaw's,  together 
with  something  which  Mr.  Shaw  disdains.  Mr.  Shaw's 
logic  is  sterile,  because  it  is  without  sense  of  touch,  sense 
of  sight,  or  sense  of  hearing  ;  once  set  going  it  is  warranted 
to  go  straight,  and  to  go  through  every  obstacle.  Tolstoi's 
logic  is  fruitful,  because  it  allows  for  human  weakness, 
because  it  understands,  and  because  to  understand  is, 
among  other  things,  to  pardon.  In  a  word,  the  difference 
between  the  spirit  of  Tolstoi  and  the  spirit  of  Mr.  Shaw 
is  the  difference  between  the  spirit  of  Christ  and  the  spirit 
of  Euclid. 


152 


"  Monna  Vanna." 

IN  his  earlier  plays  Maeterlinck  invented  a  world  of  his 
own,  which  was  a  sort  of  projection  into  space  of  the  world 
of  nursery  legends  and  of  childish  romances.  It  was  at 
once  very  abstract  and  very  local.  There  was  a  castle  by 
the  sea,  a  "well  at  the  world's  end,"  a  pool  in  a  forest; 
princesses  with  names  out  of  the  "  Morte  d'Arthur  "  lost 
crowns  of  gold,  and  blind  beggars  without  a  name 
wandered  in  the  darkness  of  eternal  terror.  Death  was 
always  the  scene-shifter  of  the  play,  and  destiny  the 
stage-manager.  The  people  who  came  and  went  had  the 
blind  gestures  of  marionettes,  and  one  pitied  their  help- 
lessness. Pity  and  terror  had  indeed  gone  to  the  making 
of  this  drama,  in  a  sense  much  more  literal  than 
Aristotle's. 

In  all  these  plays  there  were  few  words  and  many 
silences,  and  the  words  were  ambiguous,  hesitating,  often 
repeated,  like  the  words  of  peasants  or  children.  They 
were  rarely  beautiful  in  themselves,  rarely  even  significant, 
but  they  suggested  a  singular  kind  of  beauty  and  signifi- 
cance, through  their  adjustment  in  a  pattern  or  arabesque. 
Atmosphere,  the  suggestion  of  what  was  not  said,  was 
everything  ;  and  in  an  essay  in  "  Le  Tresor  des  Humbles  " 
Maeterlinck  told  us  that  in  drama,  as  he  conceived  it,  it  was 
only  the  words  that  were  not  said  which  mattered. 

Gradually  the  words  began  to  mean  more  in  the  scheme 
of  the  play.  With  "  Aglavaine  et  Selysette  "  we  got  a 
drama  of  the  inner  life,  in  which  there  was  little  action, 
little  effective  dramatic  speech,  but  in  which  people  thought 


"  Monna  Varrna." 

about  action  and  talked  about  action,  and  discussed  the 
morality  of  things  and  their  meaning,  very  beautifully. 
"  Monna  Vanna  "  is  a  development  out  of  "  Aglavaine  et 
Selysette,"  and  in  it  for  the  first  time  Maeterlinck  has 
represented  the  conflicts  of  the  inner  life  in  an 
external  form,  making  drama,  while  the  people  who 
undergo  them  discuss  them  frankly  at  the  moment  of 
their  happening. 

In  a  significant  passage  of  "La  Sagesse  et  la  Destinee," 
Maeterlinck  says  :  "  On  nous  affirme  que  toutes  les  grandes 
tragedies  ne  nous  oflfrent  pas  d'autre  spectacle  que  la  lutte 
de  1'homme  contre  la  fatalit6.  Je  crois,  au  contraire,  qu'il 
n'existe  pas  une  seule  tragMie  ou  la  fatalite  regne  reelle- 
ment.  J'ai  beau  les  parcourir,  je  n'en  trouve  pas  une  ou  le 
heros  combatte  le  destin  pur  et  simple.  Au  fond,  ce  n'est 
jamais  le  destin,  c'est  toujours  la  sagesss,  qu'il  attaque." 
And,  on  the  preceding  page,  he  says:  "  Observons  que 
les  poetes  tragiques  osent  tres  rarement  permettre  au  sage 
de  parakre  un  moment  sur  la  scene.  Us  craignent  une  ame 
haute  parce  que  les  eVenements  la  craignent."  Now  it  is 
this  conception  of  life  and  of  drama  that  we  find  in  "  Monna 
Vanna."  We  see  the  conflict  of  wisdom,  personified  in  the 
old  man  Marco  and  in  the  instinctively  wise  Giovanna,  with 
the  tragic  folly  personified  in  the  husband  Guido,  who  rebels 
against  truth  and  against  life,  and  loses  even  that  which  he 
would  sacrifice  the  world  to  keep.  The  play  is  full  of 
lessons  in  life,  and  its  deepest  lesson  is  a  warning  against 
the  too  ready  acceptance  of  this  or  that  aspect  of  truth  or  of 
morality.  Here  is  a  play  in  which  almost  every  character 
is  noble,  in  which  treachery  becomes  a  virtue,  a  lie  becomes 

'54 


"  Monna  Vanna." 

more  vital  than  truth,  and  only  what  we  are  accustomed  to 
call  virtue  shows  itself  mean,  petty,  and  even  criminal.  And 
it  is  most  like  life,  as  life  really  is,  in  this :  that  at  any 
moment  the  whole  course  of  the  action  might  be  changed, 
the  position  of  every  character  altered,  or  even  reversed,  by 
a  mere  decision  of  the  will,  open  to  each,  and  that  things 
happen  as  they  do  because  it  is  impossible,  in  the  nature  of 
each,  that  the  choice  could  be  otherwise.  Character,  in  the 
deepest  sense,  makes  the  action,  and  there  is  something  in 
the  movement  of  the  play  which  resembles  the  grave  and 
reasonable  march  of  a  play  of  Sophocles,  in  which  men  and 
women  deliberate  wisely  and  not  only  passionately,  in  which 
it  is  not  only  the  cry  of  the  heart  and  of  the  senses  which 
takes  the  form  of  drama. 

In  Maeterlinck's  earlier  plays,  in  "  Les  Aveugles," 
"Interieur,"  and  even  "  Pelleas  et  Melisande,"  he  is 
dramatic  after  a  new,  experimental  fashion  of  his  own; 
"Monna  Vanna"  is  dramatic  in  the  obvious  sense  of  the 
word.  The  action  moves,  and  moves  always  in  an  interesting, 
even  in  a  telling,  way.  But  at  the  same  time  I  cannot  but 
feel  that  something  has  been  lost.  The  speeches,  which 
were  once  so  short  as  to  be  enigmatical,  are  now  too  long, 
too  explanatory ;  they  are  sometimes  rhetorical,  and  have 
more  logic  than  life.  The  playwright  has  gained  experience, 
the  thinker  has  gained  wisdom,  but  the  curious  artist  has 
lost  some  of  his  magic.  No  doubt  the  wizard  had  drawn 
his  circle  too'small,  but  now  he  has  stepped  outside  his  circle 
into  a  world  which  no  longer  obeys  his  formulas.  In 
casting  away  his  formulas,  has  he  the  big  human  mastery 
which  alone  could  replace  them  ?  "  Monna  Vanna  "  is  a 


"  Monna  Vanna." 

remarkable  and  beautiful  play,  but  it  is  not  a  masterpiece. 
"  La  Mort  de  Tintagiles  "  was  a  masterpiece  of  a  tiny,  too 
deliberate,  kind  ;  but  it  did  something  which  no  one  had 
ever  done  before.  We  must  still,  though  we  have  seen 
"  Monna  Vanna,"  wait,  feeling  that  Maeterlinck  has  not 
given  us  all  that  he  is  capable  of  giving  us. 


156 


The  Question  of  Censorship. 

THE  letter  of  protest  which  appeared  in  the  'Times  of 
Friday,  June  30,  signed  by  Mr.  Swinburne,  Mr.  Meredith, 
and  Mr.  Hardy,  the  three  highest  names  in  contemporary 
English  literature,  will,  I  hope,  have  done  something  to 
save  the  literary  reputation  of  England  from  such  a  fate  as 
one  eminent  dramatic  critic  sees  in  store  for  it.  "  Once 
more,"  says  the  vAthenceum^  "  the  caprice  of  our  censure 
brings  contempt  upon  us,  and  makes,  or  should  make,  us 
the  laughing-stock  of  Europe."  The  Morning  Tost  is 
more  lenient,  and  is  "  sincerely  sorry  for  the  unfortunate 
censor,"  because  "he  has  immortalised  himself  by  pro- 
hibiting the  most  beautiful  play  of  his  time,  and  must  live 
to  be  the  laughing-stock  of  all  sensible  people." 

Now  the  question  is,  which  is  really  made  ridiculous  by 
this  ridiculous  episode  of  the  prohibition  of  Maeterlinck's 
"  Monna  Vanna,"  England  or  Mr.  Redford  ?  Mr.  Redford 
is  a  gentleman  of  whom  I  only  know  that  he  is  not  himself 
a  man  of  letters,  and  that  he  has  not  given  any  public 
indication  of  an  intelligent  interest  in  literature  as  literature. 
If,  as  a  private  person,  before  his  appointment  to  the  official 
post  of  censor  of  the  drama,  he  had  expressed  in  print  an 
opinion  on  any  literary  or  dramatic  question,  that  opinion 
would  have  been  taken  on  its  own  merits,  and  would  have 
carried  only  the  weight  of  its  own  contents.  The  official 
appointment,  which  gives  him  absolute  power  over  the 
public  life  or  death  of  a  play,  gives  to  the  public  no 
guarantee  of  his  fitness  for  the  post.  So  far  as  the  public 
can  judge,  he  was  chosen  as  the  typical  "  man  in  the  street," 


The  Question  of  Censorship. 

the  "  plain  man  who  wants  a  plain  answer,"  the  type  of  the 
"  golden  mean,"  or  mediocrity.  We  hear  that  he  is  honest 
and  diligent,  that  he  reads  every  word  of  every  play  sent  for 
his  inspection.  These  are  the  virtues  of  the  capable  clerk, 
not  of  the  penetrating  judge.  Now  the  position,  if  it  is  to 
be  taken  seriously,  must  require  delicate  discernment  as  well 
as  inflexible  uprightness.  Is  Mr.  Redford  capable  of  dis- 
criminating between  what  is  artistically  fine  and  what  is 
artistically  ignoble  ?  If  not,  he  is  certainly  incapable  of 
discriminating  between  what  is  morally  fine  and  what  is 
morally  ignoble.  It  is  useless  for  him  to  say  that  he  is  not 
concerned  with  art,  but  with  morals.  They  cannot  be  dis- 
severed, because  it  is  really  the  art  which  makes  the  morality. 
In  other  words,  morality  does  not  consist  in  the  facts  of  a 
situation  or  in  the  words  of  a  speech,  but  in  the  spirit  which 
informs  the  whole  work.  Whatever  may  be  the  facts  of 
"  Monna  Vanna "  (and  I  contend  that  they  are  entirely 
above  reproach,  even  as  facts),  no  one  capable  of  discerning 
the  spirit  of  a  work  could  possibly  fail  to  realise  that  the 
whole  tendency  of  the  play  is  noble  and  invigorating.  All 
this,  all  that  is  essential,  evidently  escapes  Mr.  Redford. 
He  licenses  what  the  'Times  rightly  calls  "  such  a  gross 
indecency  as  '  The  Girl  from  Maxim's.' '  But  he  refuses 
to  license  "Monna  Vanna,"  and  he  refuses  to  state  his 
reason  for  withholding  the  licence.  The  fact  is,  that  moral 
questions  are  discussed  in  it,  not  taken  for  granted,  and  the 
plain  man,  the  man  in  the  street,  is  alarmed  whenever  people 
begin  to  discuss  moral  questions.  "The  Girl  from  Maxim's" 
is  merely  indecent,  it  raises  no  problems.  "  Monna  Vanna" 
raises  problems.  Therefore,  says  the  Censor,  it  must  be 
158 


The  Question  of  Censorship. 

suppressed.  By  his  decision  in  regard  to  this  play  of 
Maeterlinck,  Mr.  Redford  has  of  course  conclusively 
proved  his  unfitness  for  his  post.  But  that  is  only  one 
part  of  the  question.  The  question  is  :  could  any  one 
man  be  found  on  whose  opinion  all  England  might  safely 
rely  for  its  dramatic  instruction  and  entertainment  ?  I 
do  not  think  such  a  man  could  be  found.  With  Mr. 
Redford,  as  the  Times  puts  it,  "  any  tinge  of  literary  merit 
seems  at  once  to  excite  his  worst  suspicions."  But  with  a 
censor  whose  sympathies  were  too  purely  literary,  literary 
in  too  narrow  a  sense,  would  not  scruples  of  some  other 
kind  begin  to  intrude  themselves,  scruples  of  the  student 
who  cannot  tolerate  an  innocent  jesting  with  "  serious " 
things,  scruples  of  the  moralist  who  must  choose  between 
Maeterlinck  and  d'Annunzio,  between  Tolstoi  and  Ibsen  ? 
I  cannot  so  much  as  think  of  a  man  in  all  England  who 
would  be  capable  of  justifying  the  existence  of  the  censor- 
ship. Is  it,  then,  merely  Mr.  Redford  who  is  made 
ridiculous  by  this  ridiculous  episode,  or  is  it  not,  after  all, 
England,  which  has  given  us  the  liberty  of  the  press  and 
withheld  from  us  the  liberty  of  the  stage  ? 


'59 


Music  in  the  Theatre. 

IT  is  the  constant  endeavour  of  the  arts  to  do  one  another's 
work,  to  occupy  one  another's  province.  Literature,  which, 
as  a  working  craft,  is  a  compromise  between  speech  and 
song,  does  indeed,  with  some  measure  of  success,  steal  from 
both  music  and  painting,  while  it  can  be  correctly  enough 
qualified  by  terms  drawn  from  sculpture  and  architecture. 
But  when  painting  tries  to  compete  with  music,  as  in  the 
Valkyries  of  Fantin-Latour  and  of  Henry  de  Groux,  or 
when  music  tries  to  compete  with  painting,  as  in  some  of 
the  symphonies  of  Richard  Strauss  or  the  Nocturnes  of 
Claude  Debussy,  each  art,  it  seems  to  me,  loses  in  real 
qualities  what  it  gains  in  make-believe  qualities.  But  the 
worst  example  of  this  further  kind  of  artistic  adultery 
consists  in  the  indiscriminate  mixing  of  words  and  music 
which  we  hear  in  most  theatres,  in  a  crude  form,  during  the 
performance  of  a  melodrama ;  in  some  theatres,  in  a  less 
crude  but  not  less  objectionable  form,  during  the  perform- 
ance of  a  tragedy  ;  and,  finally,  in  its  most  pretentious 
form  of  all,  a  would-be  artistic  creation,  like  Strauss' 
"Enoch  Arden." 

We  all  know  the  few  meek  bars  of  soft  music  which 
steal  up  from  the  orchestra  at  the  most  sentimental  moments 
of  a  sentimental  piece  at  the  Adelphi  or  the  Vaudeville. 
No  one,  I  suppose,  takes  very  seriously  those  feeble  attempts 
to  fasten  his  wandering  attention.  They  persist,  like  other 
self-evident  absurdities ;  but  no  one  defends  them.  But 
when  a  musician  like  Mr.  Coleridge-Taylor  or  Mr.  Percy 
Pitt  writes  "  incidental "  music  for  a  play  such  as  "  Ulysses  " 
1 60 


Music  in  the  Theatre. 

or  "  Paolo  and  Francesca,"  no  one  seems  to  realise  that  this 
is  merely  the  carrying  of  an  absurdity  to  a  still  more  absurd 
length.  Indeed,  a  critic  in  the  Times  of  March  7  complains 
that  "  unfortunately  the  authors  of  plays,  and  especially  of 
poetical  plays,  seem  to  have  little  sympathy  for  the  sister 
art  of  music,  and  appear  to  regard  it  as  a  harmful  necessary 
adjunct."  This  critic,  speaking  of  Mr.  Pitt's  music  (in- 
cluding "  persistent  melodrame  ")  laments  "  the  baneful 
influence  of  managerial  scissors."  "  Where,"  he  asks,  "  was 
the  music  in  that  other  scene  when,  on  Paolo's  acknow- 
ledging his  love  for  his  brother's  wife,  Giovanni  hisses  out 
the  words,  '  Thou  hast  said  it !  '  ? " 

I  am  quite  prepared  to  admit  that  a  managerial  scissors 
which  sheared  at  random,  cutting  here  and  sparing  there, 
can  hardly  be  defended  without  reservations.  But  I  contend 
that  the  managerial  scissors  did  not  cut  enough.  When 
the  curtain  is  down  let  there  be  as  much  incidental  music 
as  you  please,  whether  specially  written  for  the  performance 
by  a  composer  of  reputation  like  Mr.  Pitt  or  Mr.  Coleridge- 
Taylor,  or  taken  from  the  appropriate  work  of  a  composer, 
like  Tschaikowsky's  music  to  "  Hamlet,"  which  I  heard 
with  so  much  pleasure  last  week  in  the  intervals  of  Mr. 
Forbes-Robertson's  performance.  There  is  no  real  reason 
why  music  of  the  most  casual  kind,  so  long  as  it  is  good 
music,  and  there  is  a  good  orchestra  to  play  it,  should  not 
be  played  during  the  intervals  of  a  play  to  which  a  musical 
setting  would  be  obviously  absurd,  like  a  farce,  or  a  play  of 
Mr.  Pinero.  But  the  intrusion  of  a  single  note  of  music, 
except  when  words  are  sung  to  that  music,  or  when  troops 
are  represented  silently  marching  to  music,  or  when  a  guitar 
161  L 


Music  in  the  Theatre. 

is  supposed  to  be  heard  in  the  street,  or  for  some  similar 
reason,  is  an  intrusion  of  the  most  useless,  objectionable, 
and  wholly  inartistic  kind. 

A  musical  critic  of  my  acquaintance  complained  to  me, 
at  the  first  performance  of  "  Paolo  and  Francesca,"  that  he 
could  not  hear  the  music  properly,  because  the  people  on 
the  stage  would  talk  while  it  was  going  on.  His  criticism 
was  perfectly  just.  Either  you  go  to  hear  the  words,  and 
then  you  do  not  want  to  be  disturbed  and  annoyed  by  music 
which  clashes  with  those  words,  the  spoken  rhythm  and  the 
musical  rhythm  being  invariably  contradictory,  or  else  you 
go  to  hear  the  music,  and  then  you  do  not  want  to  hear  it 
in  snaps  and  gasps,  with  a  great  many  unnecessary  words 
inserted.  What  would  you  think  of  a  manager  who  pro- 
vided a  series  of  magic-lantern  pictures  as  an  accompaniment 
to  a  serious  play,  and  who  called  off  your  attention,  at  the 
most  serious  moments  of  that  play,  by  flashing  a  symbolical 
representation  of  them  on  a  curtain  at  the  back  of  the  stage  ? 
Yet  that  would  be  doing  precisely  what  those  managers  are 
doing  who  give  us  music  in  the  orchestra  during  the  per- 
formance of  a  play  on  the  stage. 

It  is  one  step  further,  along  a  downward  path,  when  we 
find  a  composer  like  Schumann  writing  music  to  be  played 
by  the  orchestra  while  Byron's  "  Manfred  "  is  recited,  or  a 
composer  like  Richard  Strauss  writing  music  for  the  piano 
to  be  played  while  Tennyson's  "  Enoch  Arden  "  is  recited. 
I  had  an  opportunity  of  hearing  both,  only  the  other  day, 
on  the  occasion  of  Herr  Strauss'  visit  to  London.  Schu- 
mann's music  suffered  most,  partly  because  it  had  so  much 
more  to  lose,  but  both  performances  were  a  torture  to  me. 
162 


Music  in  the  Theatre. 

Herr  Strauss  conducted  the  "  Manfred  "  with  great  delicacy, 
and  I  was  .waiting  anxiously  for  the  most  delicate  passage 
in  the  music,  the  lento  at  the  beginning  of  Act  III.  It  came; 
I  believe  it  was  beautifully  played,  but  while  it  was  being 
played,  pianissimo,  Herr  von  Possart  was  shouting  in  a 
strenuous  voice,  and  in  German  : 

If  that  I  did  not  know  philosophy 
To  be  of  all  our  vanities  the  motliest, 
The  merest  word  that  ever  fooled  the  ear 
From  out  the  schoolman's  jargon  .  .  . 

The  delicate  music  was  lost,  buried  under  the  weight  of  a 
German  voice  and  the  dust  of  Byron's  verses. 

The  systematic  distortion  of  words  by  music  and  of  music 
by  words  seems  to  have  culminated  in  Debussy's  setting  of 
Maeterlinck's  "  Pelleas  et  Melisande,"  lately  produced  at 
the  Opera-Comique.  I  have  not  heard  it,  or  seen  the  music, 
but  I  have  read  accounts  of  it,  written  from  every  point  of 
view,  and  I  have  talked  with  people  who  have  heard  it.  Miss 
Alma-Tadema  gives  her  impression  of  it,  which  seems  to  me 
as  if  it  must  be  a  just  one,  in  her  article  on  "  Monna  Vanna  " 
in  the  Fortnightly  Review.  M.  Vincent  d'Indy,  the  com- 
poser, in  a  very  generous  article  in  that  excellent  French 
magazine  V  Occident,  the  best  and  most  thoughtful  of  the 
younger  French  reviews,  has  said  all  there  is  to  be  said  in 
its  defence.  It  is  an  attempt  to  write  music  without  either 
melody  or  rhythm,  in  an  "uninterrupted  stream  of 
harmony,"  and  to  set  this  music  murmuring  in  the  orchestra 
while  the  actors  or  singers  speak  or  sing  their  words  to 
notes  without  sequence  or  connection.  Of  the  voices,  we 
163 


Music  in  the  Theatre. 

are  told  by  M.  Raymond  Bouyer  in  the  Nouvelle  Revue, 
"  Le  chant  des  acteurs  n'est  qu'une  declamation  des  voix ; 
cette  declamation  n'est  qu'une  psalmodie  sans  forme  et  sans 
couleur,  en  une  cr£puscule."  Of  the  orchestra,  we  are  told 
by  M.  Camille  Bellaigue  in  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes, 
"  II  fait  peu  de  bruit,  je  1'accorde,  mais  un  vilain  petit 
bruit." 


164 


On  Crossing  Stage  to  Right. 

IF  you  look  into  the  actors'  prompt-books,  the  most 
frequent  direction  which  you  will  find  is  this :  "  Cross 
stage  to  right."  It  is  not  a  mere  direction,  it  is  a  formula  ; 
it  is  not  a  formula  only,  but  a  universal  remedy.  When- 
ever the  action  seems  to  flag,  or  the  dialogue  to  become 
weak  or  wordy,  you  must  "  cross  stage  to  right  "  ;  no  matter 
what  is  wrong  with  the  play,  this  will  set  it  right.  We  have 
heard  so  much  of  the  "  action  "  of  a  play,  that  the  stage- 
manager  in  England  seems  to  imagine  that  dramatic  action 
is  literally  a  movement  of  people  across  the  stage,  even  if 
for  no  other  reason  than  for  movement's  sake.  Is  the  play 
weak  ?  He  tries  to  strengthen  it,  poor  thing,  by  sending 
it  out  walking  for  its  health. 

If  we  take  drama  with  any  seriousness,  as  an  art  as  well 
as  an  improvisation,  we  shall  realise  that  one  of  its  main 
requirements  is  that  it  should  make  pictures.  That  is  the 
lesson  of  Bayreuth,  and  when  one  comes  away,  the  impres- 
sion which  remains,  almost  longer  than  the  impression  of 
the  music  itself,  is  that  grave,  regulated  motion  of  the 
actors.  As  I  have  said  elsewhere,  no  actor  makes  a  gesture 
which  has  not  been  regulated  for  him  ;  there  is  none  of  that 
unintelligent  haphazard  known  as  being  "natural";  these 
people  move  like  music,  or  with  that  sense  of  motion  which 
it  is  the  business  of  painting  to  arrest.  But  here,  of  course, 
I  am  speaking  of  the  poetic  drama,  of  drama  which  does  not 
aim  at  the  realistic  representation  of  modern  life.  Maeterlinck 
should  be  acted  in  this  solemn  way,  in  a  kind  of  convention  ; 
but  I  admit  that  you  cannot  act  Ibsen  in  quite  the  same  way. 
165 


On  Crossing  Stage  to  Right. 

The  other  day,  when  Mme.  Jeanne  Granier's  company 
came  over  here  to  give  us  some  lessons  in  acting,  I  watched 
a  little  scene  in  "  La  Veine,"  which  was  one  of  the  telling 
scenes  of  the  play :  Guitry  and  Brasseur  standing  face  to 
face  for  some  minutes,  looking  at  their  watches,  and  then 
waiting,  each  with  a  single,  fixed  expression  on  his  face,  in 
which  the  whole  temperament  of  each  is  summed  up.  One 
is  inclined  to  say :  No  English  actor  could  have  done  it. 
Perhaps  ;  but  then,  no  English  stage-manager  would  have 
let  them  do  it.  They  would  have  been  told  to  move,  to  find 
"  business,"  to  indulge  in  gesture  which  would  not  come 
naturally  to  them.  Again,  in  "  Tartuffe,"  when,  at  the  end, 
the  hypocrite  is  exposed  and  led  off  to  prison,  Coquelin 
simply  turns  his  back  on  the  audience,  and  stands,  with 
head  sullenly  down,  making  no  movement ;  then,  at  the 
end,  he  turns  half-round  and  walks  straight  off,  on  the 
nearer  side  of  the  stage,  giving  you  no  more  than  a  momen- 
tary glimpse  of  a  convulsed  face,  fixed  into  a  definite,  gross, 
raging  mood.  It  would  have  taken  Mr.  Tree  five  minutes 
to  get  off  the  stage,  and  he  would  have  walked  to  and  fro 
with  a  very  multiplication  of  gesture,  trying  on  one  face,  so 
to  speak,  after  another.  Would  it  have  been  so  effective, 
that  is  to  say,  so  real  ? 

A  great  part  of  the  art  of  French  acting  consists  in  know- 
ing when  and  how  not  to  do  things.  Their  blood  helps 
them,  for  there  is  movement  in  their  blood,  and  they  have 
something  to  restrain.  But  they  have  realised  the  art  there 
is  in  being  quite  still,  in  speaking  naturally,  as  people  do 
when  they  are  really  talking,  in  fixing  attention  on  the  words 
they  are  saying  and  not  on  their  antics  while  saying  them. 
1 66 


On  Crossing  Stage  to  Right. 

The  other  day,  in  the  first  act  of  "  The  Bishop's  Move  "  at 
the  Garrick,  there  is  a  Duchess  talking  to  a  young  novice 
in  the  refectory  of  a  French  abbey.  After  standing  talking 
to  him  for  a  few  minutes,  with  only  such  movements 
as  would  be  quite  natural  under  the  circumstances,  she 
takes  his  arm,  not  once  only  but  twice,  and  walks  him 
up  and  down  in  front  of  the  footlights,  for  no  reason  in 
the  world  except  to  "  cross  stage  to  right."  The  stage 
trick  was  so  obvious  that  it  deprived  the  scene  at  once  of 
any  pretence  to  reality. 

The  fact  is,  that  we  do  not  sufficiently  realise  the  differ- 
ence between  what  is  dramatic  and  what  is  merely  theatrical. 
Drama  is  made  to  be  acted,  and  the  finest  "  literary  "  play 
in  the  world,  if  it  wholly  fails  to  interest  people  on  the 
stage,  will  have  wholly  failed  in  its  first  and  most  essential 
aim.  But  the  finer  part  of  drama  is  implicit  in  the  words 
and  in  the  development  of  the  play,  and  not  in  its  separate 
small  details  of  literal  "  action."  Two  people  should  be 
able  to  sit  quietly  in  a  room,  without  ever  leaving  their 
chairs,  and  to  hold  our  attention  breathless  for  as  long  as  the 
playwright  likes.  Given  a  good  play,  French  actors  are  able 
to  do  that.  Given  a  good  play,  English  actors  are  not 
allowed  to  do  it. 

Is  it  not  partly  the  energy,  the  restless  energy,  of  the 
English  character  which  prevents  our  actors  from  ever  sitting 
or  standing  still  on  the  stage  ?  We  are  a  nation  of  travellers, 
of  sailors,  of  business  people ;  and  all  these  have  to  keep  for 
ever  moving.  Our  dances  are  the  most  vigorous  and 
athletic  of  dances,  they  carry  us  all  over  the  stage,  with  all 
kinds  of  leaping  and  kicking  movements.  Our  music-hall 
167 


On  Crossing  Stage  to  Right. 

performers  have  invented  a  kind  of  clowning  peculiar  to 
this  country,  in  which  kicking  and  leaping  are  also  a  part  of 
the  business.  Our  melodramas  are  constructed  on  more 
movable  planes,  with  more  formidable  collapses  and 
collisions,  than  those  of  any  other  country.  Is  not,  then, 
the  persistent  English  habit  of  "  crossing  stage  to  right  "  a 
national  characteristic,  ingrained  in  us,  and  not  only  a 
matter  of  training  ?  It  is  this  reflection  which  hinders 
me  from  hoping,  with  much  confidence,  that  a  reform  in 
stage-management  will  lead  to  a  really  quieter  and  simpler 
way  of  acting.  But  might  not  the  experiment  be  tried  ? 
Might  not  some  stage-manager  come  forward  and  say  :  "  For 
heaven's  sake  stand  still,  my  dear  ladies  and  gentlemen,  and 
see  if  you  cannot  interest  your  audience  without  moving 
more  than  twice  the  length  of  your  own  feet  ? " 


168 


Suggestions  to  Managers. 

I  HAVE  been  waiting  for  a  quiet  moment  in  which  to  make 
a  few  complaints  or  suggestions  about  some  practical  matters 
connected  with  the  stage.  I  take  them  as  they  recur  to  my 
memory. 

One  is  this :  Why  is  the  hour  at  which  performances 
begin  so  rarely  printed  on  the  tickets  ?  An  afternoon 
performance  may  begin  at  two,  at  two-thirty,  or  at  three  ; 
an  evening  performance  at  any  quarter  of  the  hour  from 
eight  to  nine,  and  occasionally  even  earlier.  Very  few 
people  live  quite  close  to  the  theatres  ;  most  have  to  time 
themselves  exactly  according  to  the  speed  of  the  carriages, 
cabs,  omnibuses,  or  trains  in  which  they  travel.  Thus  the 
exact  hour  of  the  performance  is  a  matter  of  considerable 
moment.  Now  perhaps  one  ticket  in  thirty  which  comes 
into  my  hands  as  a  dramatic  critic  contains  the  hour  of  the 
performance.  I  live  too  far  from  the  theatre  to  be  able  to 
go  and  look  at  the  placards  outside  the  theatre  doors  ;  if  I 
went,  I  should  frequently  find  that  the  time  was  not 
mentioned  even  on  these  placards.  I  suppose,  as  a  rule, 
people  look  at  the  advertisements  in  the  newspapers.  But 
I  happen  to  take  in  no  newspaper,  and  often  do  not  see  one 
for  weeks  together.  Sometimes  I  buy  an  evening  paper 
for  the  special  purpose  of  finding  out  the  time  of  a 
performance ;  only  to  find  no  advertisement  of  the 
theatre  to  which  I  have  to  go,  or  an  advertisement  which 
mentions  everything  but  the  time.  It  seems  to  me  that 
it  is  part  of  the  business  of  a  theatre  to  print  the  time  of 
performance  on  every  ticket,  and  so  self-evident  a  part  of 
169 


Suggestions  to  Managers. 

its  business  that  I  cannot  understand  why  it  is  not  univer- 
sally done. 

Most  theatres  have  by  now  abolished  the  old  system  of 
paying  for  programmes:  should  not  that  system  be 
abolished  in  all  theatres  ?  As  a  rule  a  dramatic  critic  is 
not  charged  for  his  programme,  and  I  am  now  speaking, 
not  for  myself,  but  for  the  general  public.  The  un- 
expected demand  for  sixpence  usually  pulls  up  a  man 
on  his  difficult  and  painful  struggle  to  get  around  knees 
without  treading  on  toes ;  it  keeps  him  fumbling  in  his 
pocket,  to  the  inconvenience  of  half  a  row  of  people, 
some  of  whom  are  standing  to  let  him  pass.  But  in  the 
case  of  a  lady  it  is  worse.  Two  ladies  who  come  to 
the  theatre  together  have  either  come  in  a  carriage,  without 
thinking  of  bringing  money  with  them,  or  else  they  have  the 
exact  cab  fare  home  in  the  palm  of  their  gloves.  They 
have  neither  pockets  nor  purses.  What  can  they  do  ?  They 
must  go  without  a  programme,  because  they  have  forgotten 
that  the  theatre  to  which  they  have  come  is  one  of  the 
penny-wise  and  pound-foolish  sort. 

And  now,  having  spoken  for  the  public,  let  me  speak  for 
myself.  The  custom  seems  to  me  to  be  increasing  of  giving 
bad  seats  to  the  dramatic  critics,  or  to  all  but  those  who 
represent  the  two  or  three  most  influential  papers.  I  have 
never  been  able  to  understand  the  principle  on  which  seats 
are  distributed.  A  few  theatres  reserve  the  best  seats  of  the 
first  few  rows  of  the  stalls  for  the  use  of  the  critics  ;  but  in 
most  of  the  theatres  I  am  liable  to  be  startled  by  the  sight 
of  Mr.  Archer,  let  us  say,  in  the  back  row,  and  some 
obscure  person,  whose  name  I  cannot  give  because  I  do  not 
170 


Suggestions  to  Managers. 

know  it,  in  the  front  row.  Several  theatres  push  back  their 
stalls  half  way  into  the  pit  for  a  first  night,  and  give  the 
critics  what  are  really  no  better  than  seats  in  the  pit,  while 
the  better  part  of  the  theatre  is  filled  with  showy  "  paper." 
Now  the  opinion  of  the  critics  must  be  considered  of  some 
importance,  or  they  would  not  be  invited  to  attend ;  and 
their  opinion  must  to  some  extent  depend  on  their  comfort, 
on  whether  they  have  or  have  not  to  strain  their  eyes  to  see 
what  is  going  on  on  the  stage,  and  their  ears  to  hear  what 
is  being  said  there.  Is  it  not  wise,  as  well  as  fair,  to  make 
the  critic's  task  as  pleasant  to  him  as  you  can  ?  Remember 
that  he  does  not  come  to  the  theatre  for  his  pleasure,  and 
that  he  is  the  only  person  in  the  audience  who  has  to 
come  alone. 

A  recent  misadventure  of  Mr.  Robert  Newman,  who  has 
done  so  much  for  music  in  England,  has  set  me  thinking 
on  the  question  of  concert-giving,  and  I  am  convinced  that 
two  things  are  mainly  responsible  for  the  financial  losses  of 
concert-givers  :  one  is  that  the  seats  are  too  expensive,  and 
the  other  is,  that  the  concerts  are  too  long.  Now  a  reform 
in  one  of  these  evils  would  lead  necessarily  to  the  reform 
of  the  other.  Mr.  Newman  may  say,  "  I  am  obliged  to 
charge  155.  for  a  stall,  or  I  cannot  pay  my  orchestra  its 
^200,  and  my  soloists  their  various  big  prices."  I  would 
answer :  No  one  can  enjoy  the  whole  of  such  concerts  as 
you  give  ;  cut  them  in  two,  charge  half  the  price  for  each 
half,  and  instead  of  having  a  hall  made  up  of  empty  seats 
and  "  paper,"  you  will  have  every  seat  filled.  In  some  of 
the  East  End  theatres  and  music  halls  there  are  two  per- 
formances an  evening ;  the  performances  are  cheap  and 
171 


Suggestions  to  Managers. 

brief,  and  they  are  packed  twice  over.  The  East  End  has 
much  to  teach  us.  Let  an  afternoon  be  divided  into  two 
concerts,  one  following  the  other  with  a  short  interval,  and 
neither  longer  than  an  hour,  or  an  hour  and  a  quarter.  The 
first  audience  can  have  tea  after  its  concert,  the  second 
audience  can  have  tea  before  its  concert.  Neither  audience 
will  have  a  headache. 

The  fact  is,  that  music  cannot  be  listened  to  with  any 
real  enjoyment  when  it  is  listened  to  hour  after  hour  in  a 
heavy  atmosphere.  The  ears  listen  mechanically,  in  a 
kind  of  stupor  ;  the  brain  ceases  to  follow  ;  you  can  no  longer 
either  criticise  or  enjoy.  What  we  want  is  to  have  short 
concerts,  and  short  concerts  will  bring  with  them  what  are 
rightly  termed  popular  prices.  Will  not  Mr.  Newman  or 
some  other  businesslike  enthusiast  try  the  experiment  ? 


172 


The  Price  of  Realism. 

MODERN  staging,  which  has  been  carried  in  England  to  its 
highest  point  of  excellence,  professes  to  aim  at  beauty,  and 
is,  indeed,  often  beautiful  in  detail.  But  its  real  aim  is  not 
at  the  creation  of  beautiful  pictures,  in  subordination  to  the 
words  and  actions  of  the  play,  but  at  supplementing  words 

and   actions   by  an    exact    imitation  of  real  surroundings. 

...  .  ^ 

Imitation,  not   creation,  is  its  end,   and  in  its  attempt  to 

imitate  the  general  aspect  of  things  it  leads  the  way  to  the 
substitution  of  things  themselves  for  perfectly  satisfactory 
indications  of  them.  "  Real  water  "  we  have  all  heard  of, 
and  we  know  its  place  in  the  theatre ;  but  this  is  only  the 
simplest  form  of  this  anti-artistic  endeavour  to  be  real.  Sir 
Henry  Irving  will  use,  for  a  piece  of  decoration  meant  to  be 
seen  only  from  a  distance,  a  garland  of  imitation  flowers, 
exceedingly  well  done,  costing  perhaps  two  pounds,  where 
two  or  three  brushes  of  paint  would  have  supplied  its  place 
more  effectively.  When  d'Annunzio's  "  Francesca  da 
Rimini "  was  put  on  the  stage  in  Rome,  a  pot  of  basil  was 
brought  daily  from  Naples  in  order  that  it  might  be  laid  on 
the  window-sill  of  the  room  in  which  Francesca  and  Paolo 
read  of  Lancelot  and  Guinevere.  In  an  interview  published 
in  one  of  the  English  papers,  d'Annunzio  declared  that  he 
had  all  his  stage  decorations  made  in  precious  metal  by  fine 
craftsmen,  and  that  he  had  done  this  for  an  artistic  purpose, 
and  not  only  for  the  beauty  of  the  things  themselves.  The 
gesture,  he  said,  of  the  actor  who  lifts  to  his  lips  a  cup  of 
finely-wrought  gold  will  be  finer,  more  sincere,  than  that  of 
the  actor  who  uses  a  gilded  u  property." 

173 


The  Price  of  Realism. 

If  so,  I  can  but  answer,  the  actor  is  no  actor,  but  an 
amateur.  The  true  actor  walks  in  a  world  as  real  in  its 
unreality  as  that  which  surrounds  the  poet  or  the  enthusiast. 
The  bare  boards,  chairs,  and  T-light,  in  the  midst  of  which 
he  rehearses,  are  as  significantly  palaces  or  meadows  to  him, 
while  he  speaks  his  lines  and  lives  himself  into  his  character, 
as  all  the  real  grass  and  real  woodwork  with  which  the 
manager  will  cumber  the  stage  on  the  first  night.  As 
little  will  he  need  to  distinguish  between  the  gilt  and  the 
gold  cup  as  between  the  imaginary  characters  who  surround 
him,  and  his  mere  friends  and  acquaintances  who  are  speaking 
for  them. 

This  costly  and  inartistic  aim  at  reality,  then,  is  the  vice 
of  the  modern  stage,  and,  at  its  best  or  worst,  can  it  be 
said  that  it  is  really  even  when  it  pretends  to  be :  a  perfectly 
deceptive  imitation  of  a  real  thing  ?  I  said  once,  to  clinch 
an  argument  against  it,  by  giving  it  its  full  possible  credit, 
that  the  modern  staging  can  give  you  the  hour  of  the  day 
and  the  corner  of  the  country  with  precise  accuracy.  But 
can  it  ?  Has  the  most  gradual  of  stage-moons  ever  caught 
the  miraculous  lunar  trick  to  the  life  ?  Has  the  real  hedge- 
row ever  brought  a  breath  of  the  country  upon  the  stage  ? 
I  do  not  think  so,  and  meanwhile,  we  have  been  trying 
our  hardest  to  persuade  ourselves  that  it  is  so,  instead  of 
abandoning  ourselves  to  a  new,  strange  atmosphere,  to  the 
magic  of  the  play  itself. 

When,  on  many  occasions,  I  have  praised  Mr.  Gordon 
Craig's  staging  of  "  Acis  and  Galatea,"  "  Dido  and 
Aeneas,"  and  "The  Masque  of  Love,"  for  its  beauty, 
suggestion,  and  novel  audacities,  I  have  said  a  great  deal. 

174 


On  Musical  Criticism. 

LAST  week,  one  of  the  Academy's  essayists  in  little  found 
himself  wondering  why  there  were  so  few  instructive  and 
delightful  books  about  music,  why,  as  a  rule,  or  even  as  an 
exception,  there  was  so  little  instructive  and  delightful 
musical  criticism.  But  I  think  "  M.  M.  B."  exaggerates. 
"  Why,"  he  laments,  "  is  there  so  much  written  that  is  inter- 
esting concerning  books  and  writers,  art  and  artists,  science 
and  scientists,  and  so  little  appealing  to  the  music-lover  or 
helping  him  in  his  art  ? "  Now  it  seems  to  me  that,  in 
spite  of  the  fact  that  music  is  much  more  difficult  to  write 
about  than  any  of  the  other  arts,  a  great  deal  that  is  both 
interesting  and  valuable  has  been  written  about  music, 
not  only  from  a  technical  but  from  a  general  point  of  view. 
Wagner's  prose  writings  present  us  with  a  body  of  theory  con- 
cerning his  art  such  as  few  poets  or  painters  have  ever  given  us 
concerning  theirs.  Indeed,  I  think  we  can  find  a  parallel  only 
in  the  writings  of  Leonardo  da  Vinci  and  Sir  Joshua  Reynolds 
on  the  one  hand,  and  of  Goethe  and  Coleridge  on  the  other. 
Then,  among  musicians,  there  was  Schumann,  who  edited 
musical  papers  and  wrote  the  main  part  of  them ;  who 
wrote,  indeed,  in  only  too  literary  a  way,  but  always  with 
an  eager  and  watchful  insight,  which  was  rarely  deceived, 
ready  to  discover  a  new  genius  before  that  genius  had  really 
discovered  himself.  Liszt  wrote  with  voluminous  and 
flowing  eloquence,  as  in  his  book  on  Chopin ;  Berlioz  was 
a  musical  critic  for  thirty  years,  besides  writing  one  of  the 
most  delightful  and  quite  the  most  exhilarating  of  auto- 
biographies; Saint-Saens,  Bruneau,  Vincent  d'Indy,  most 

177  M 


On  Musical  Criticism. 

indeed  of  the  contemporary  French  composers,  have  written 
musical  criticism,  always  in  an  attractive  as  well  as  a  sound 
and  serious  way.  Gluck,  who  anticipated  Wagner  in  his 
music,  anticipated  him  also  in  a  theoretical  preface  which 
sets  forth  very  much  the  ideas  which  Wagner  was  afterwards 
to  develop.  Then  in  regard  to  the  musicians  who  have 
written  nothing  for  the  public,  how  much  splendid  incidental 
criticism  do  we  not  find  in  the  letters  which  their  biographers 
have  printed  after  their  death !  For  my  part  I  know 
hardly  any  biographical  literature  so  full,  various,  and  enter- 
taining as  the  biographies  of  musicians.  Few  musicians 
have  not  had  at  least  one  good  biographer.  And,  as  a 
matter  of  interest,  I  contend  that  Grove's  "  Dictionary  of 
Musicians "  is  as  good  a  companion  for  a  wet  day  in  the 
country  as  any  volume  of  Larousse  or  of  the  "  Encyclopaedia 
Britannica." 

"  The  musical  papers,"  says  "  M.  M.  B.,"  "  fall  far  short 
of  their  possibilities,  and  few  critics  are  capable  of  really 
illuminative  articles."  No  doubt ;  but  remember  that  while 
everybody,  in  a  certain  sense,  can  write  about  literature,  only 
musicians,  or  those  who  have  made  a  special  study  of  music, 
can  write  about  music,  and  a  good  musician  is  much  better 
employed  in  writing  music.  Think  of  the  ecstasy  with 
which  Berlioz,  when  at  last  he  had  made  a  little  money  by 
his  "Troyens,"  gave  up  his  post  on  the  Debats !  "At 
last,"  he  cries  in  his  autobiography,  "  after  thirty  years' 
bondage,  I  am  free  !  No  more  feuilletons  to  write,  no  more 
commonplaces  to  excuse,  no  more  mediocrities  to  praise,  no 
more  indignation  to  suppress ;  no  more  lies,  no  more 
comedies,  no  more  mean  compromises — I  am  free!"  And 
178 


On  Musical  Criticism. 

he  gravely  writes  down  :  "  Gloria  in  exce/sis  Deo,  et  in  terra 
pax  hominibus  bon<e  voluntatis" 

The  reason  why  music  is  so  much  more  difficult  to  write 
about  than  any  other  art,  is  because  music  is  the  one 
absolutely  disembodied  art,  when  it  is  heard,  and  no  more 
than  a  proposition  of  Euclid,  when  it  is  written.  It  is 
wholly  useless,  to  the  student  no  less  than  to  the  general 
reader,  to  write  about  music  in  the  style  of  the  programmes 
for  which  we  pay  sixpence  at  the  concerts.  "  Repeated  by 
flute  and  oboe,  with  accompaniment  for  clarionet  (in  triplets) 
and  strings  pizzicato,  and  then  worked  up  by  the  full 
orchestra,  this  melody  is  eventually  allotted  to  the  'cellos, 
its  accompaniment  now  taking  the  form  of  chromatic 
passages,"  and  so  forth.  Not  less  useless  is  it  to  write  a 
rhapsody  which  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  notes,  and  to 
present  this  as  an  interpretation  of  what  the  notes  have 
said  in  an  unknown  language.  Yet  what  method  is  there 
besides  these  two  methods  ?  None,  indeed,  that  can  ever 
be  wholly  satisfactory ;  at  the  best,  no  more  than  a  com- 
promise. 

In  writing  about  poetry,  while  precisely  that  quality  which 
makes  it  poetry  must  always  evade  expression,  there  yet 
remain  the  whole  definite  meaning  of  the  words,  and  the  whole 
easily  explicable  technique  of  the  verse,  which  can  be  made 
clear  to  every  reader.  In  painting,  you  have  the  subject  of 
the  picture,  and  .you  have  the  colour,  handling,  and  the  like, 
which  can  be  expressed  hardly  less  precisely  in  words.  But 
music  has  no  subject,  outside  itself;  no  meaning,  outside  its 
meaning  as  music ;  and,  to  understand  anything  of  what 
is  meant  by  its  technique,  a  certain  definite  technical  know- 
179 


On  Musical  Criticism. 

ledge  is  necessary  in  the  reader.  What  subterfuges  are 
required,  in  order  to  give  the  vaguest  suggestion  of  what  a 
piece  of  music  is  like,  and  how  little  has  been  said,  after  all, 
beyond  generalisation,  which  would  apply  equally  to  half  a 
dozen  different  pieces !  The  composer  himself,  if  you  ask 
him,  will  tell  you  that  you  may  be  quite  correct  in  what  you 
say,  but  that  he  has  no  opinion  in  the  matter. 

Music  has  indeed  a  language,  but  it  is  a  language  in 
which  birds  and  other  angels  may  talk,  but  out  of  which 
we  cannot  translate  their  meaning.  Emotion  itself,  how 
changed  becomes  even  emotion  when  we  transport  it  into 
a  new  world,  in  which  only  sound  has  feeling !  But  I 
am  putting  it  as  if  it  had  died  and  been  re-born  there, 
whereas  it  was  born  in  its  own  region,  and  is  wholly 
ignorant  of  ours. 

Now  is  there  not  some  reason  why  musical  criticism  is 
not  always  "  illuminative,"  "  instructive,"  or  "  delightful  "  ? 
Is  it  not,  on  the  other  hand,  surprising  that  so  much 
valuable  writing  about  music  does  exist  ?  Of  music  as 
music,  perhaps  no  one  has  really  written ;  but  theory  and 
anecdote,  these  remain,  and  when  Berlioz  writes  it,  even 
a  treatise  on  instrumentation  can  become  as  interesting  as 
a  fairy-tale. 


1 80 


The  Meiningen  Orchestra. 

OTHER  orchestras  give  performances,  readings,  approxima- 
tions ;  the  Meiningen  orchestra  gives  an  interpretation,  that 
is,  the  thing  itself.  When  this  orchestra  plays  a  piece  of 
music  every  note  lives,  and  not,  as  with  most  orchestras, 
every  particularly  significant  note.  Brahms  is  sometimes 
dull,  but  he  is  never  dull  when  these  people  play  him  ; 
Schubert  is  sometimes  tame,  but  not  when  they  play  him. 
What  they  do  is  precisely  to  put  vitality  into  even  those 
parts  of  a  composition  in  which  it  is  scarcely  present,  or 
scarcely  realisable  ;  and  that  is  a  much  more  difficult  thing, 
and  really  a  more  important  thing,  for  the  proper  apprecia- 
tion of  music,  than  the  heightening  of  what  is  already  fine, 
and  obviously  fine  in  itself.  And  this  particular  quality 
of  interpretation  has  its  value  too  as  criticism.  For,  while 
it  gives  the  utmost  value  to  what  is  implicitly  there,  there 
at  least  in  embryo,  it  cannot  create  out  of  nothing  ;  it 
cannot  make  insincere  work  sincere,  or  fill  empty  work 
with  meaning  which  never  could  have  belonged  to  it. 
Brahms,  at  his  moments  of  least  vitality,  comes  into  a  new 
vigour  of  life ;  but  Strauss,  played  by  these  sincere, 
precise,  thoughtful  musicians  shows,  as  he  never  could 
show  otherwise,  the  distance  at  which  his  lively  spectre 
stands  from  life.  When  I  heard  the  "  Don  Juan  "  which 
I  had  heard  twice  before,  and  liked  less  the  second  time 
than  the  first,  I  realised  finally  the  whole  strain,  pretence, 
and  emptiness  of  the  thing.  Played  with  this  earnest 
attention  to  the  meaning  of  every  note,  it  was  like  a  trivial 
drama  when  Duse  acts  it ;  it  went  to  pieces  through  being 
181 


The  Meiningen  Orchestra. 

taken  at  its  own  word.  It  was  as  if  a  threadbare  piece 
of  stuff  were  held  up  to  the  full  sunlight ;  you  saw  every 
stitch  that  was  wanting. 

The  "  Don  Juan  "  was  followed  by  the  Entr'acte  and 
Ballet  music  from  "  Rosamunde,"  and  here  the  same  sun- 
light was  no  longer  criticism,  but  rather  an  illumination.  I 
have  never  heard  any  music  more  beautifully  played.  I 
could  only  think  of  the  piano  playing  of  Pachmann.  The 
faint,  delicate  music  just  came  into  existence,  breathed  a 
little,  and  was  gone.  Here  for  once  was  an  orchestra 
which  could  literally  be  overheard.  The  overture  to  the 
"  Meistersinger "  followed,  and  here,  for  the  first  time,  I 
got,  quite  flawless  and  uncontradictory,  the  two  impressions 
which  that  piece  presents  to  one  simultaneously.  I  heard 
the  unimpeded  march  forward,  and  I  distinguished  at  the 
same  time  every  delicate  impediment  thronging  the  way. 
Some  renderings  give  you  a  sense  of  solidity  and  straight- 
forward movement ;  others  of  the  elaborate  and  various  life 
which  informs  this  so  solid  structure.  Here  one  got  the 
complete  thing,  completely  rendered. 

I  could  not  say  the  same  of  the  rendering  of  the  overture 
to  "  Tristan."  Here  the  notes,  all  that  was  so  to  speak 
merely  musical  in  the  music,  were  given  their  just  expres- 
sion ;  but  the  something  more,  the  vast  heave  and  throb  of 
the  music,  was  not  there.  It  was  a  "  classical  "  rendering 
of  what  is  certainly  not  "  classical "  music.  Hear  that 
overture  as  Richter  gives  it,  and  you  will  realise  just  where  the 
Meiningen  orchestra  is  lacking.  It  has  the  kind  of  energy 
which  is  required  to  render  Beethoven's  multitudinous 
energy,  or  the  energy  which  can  be  heavy  and  cloudy  in 
iSz 


The  Meiningen  Orchestra. 

Brahms,  or  like  overpowering  light  in  Bach,  or,  in  Wagner 
himself,  an  energy  which  works  within  known  limits,  as  in 
the  overture  to  the  u  Meistersinger."  But  that  wholly 
new,  and  somewhat  feverish,  overwhelming  quality  which 
we  find  in  the  music  of  "  Tristan"  meets  with  something 
less  than  the  due  response.  It  is  a  quality  which  people 
used  to  say  was  not  musical  at  all,  a  quality  which  does  not 
appeal  certainly  to  the  musical  sense  alone  :  for  the  render- 
ing of  that  we  must  go  to  Richter. 

Otherwise,  in  that  third  concert,  it  would  be  difficult  to 
say  whether  Schumann,  Brahms,  Mozart,  or  Beethoven  was 
the  better  rendered.  Perhaps  one  might  choose  Mozart  for 
pure  pleasure.  It  was  the  "  Serenade "  for  wind  instru- 
ments, and  it  seemed,  played  thus  perfectly,  the  most 
delightful  music  in  the  world.  The  music  of  Mozart  is,  no 
doubt,  the  most  beautiful  music  in  the  world.  When  I 
heard  the  serenade  I  thought  of  Coventry  Patmore's  epithet, 
actually  used,  I  think,  about  Mozart :  "  glittering  peace." 
Schumann,  Brahms,  Wagner,  and  Beethoven  all  seemed  for 
the  moment  to  lose  a  little  of  their  light  under  this  pure 
and  tranquil  and  unwavering  "glitter."  I  hope  I  shall 
never  hear  the  "  Serenade  "  again,  for  I  shall  never  hear  it 
played  as  these  particular  players  played  it. 

The  Meiningen  orchestra  is  famous  for  its  wind,  and 
when,  at  the  first  concert,  I  heard  Beethoven's  Rondino  for 
wind  instruments,  it  seemed  to  me  that  I  was  hearing  brass 
for  the  first  time  as  I  had  imagined  brass  ought  to  sound. 
Here  was,  not  so  much  a  new  thing  which  one  had  never 
thought  possible,  as  that  precise  thing  which  one's  ears  had 
expected,  and  waited  for,  and  never  heard.  One  quite 

183 


The  Meiningen  Orchestra. 

miraculous  thing  these  wind  players  certainly  did,  in 
common,  however,  with  the  whole  orchestra.  And  that 
was  to  give  an  effect  of  distance,  as  if  the  sound  came 
actually  from  beyond  the  walls.  I  noticed  it  first  in  the 
overture  to  "  Lenore,"  the  first  piece  which  they  played ; 
an  unparalleled  effect  and  one  of  surprising  beauty. 

Another  matter  for  which  the  Meiningen  orchestra  is 
famous  is  its  interpretation  of  the  works  of  Brahms.  At 
each  concert  some  fine  music  of  Brahms  was  given  finely, 
but  it  was  not  until  the  fourth  concert  that  I  realised,  on 
hearing  the  third  Symphony,  everything  of  which  Brahms 
was  capable.  It  may  be  that  a  more  profound  acquaintance 
with  his  music  would  lead  me  to  add  other  things  to  this 
thing  as  the  finest  music  which  he  ever  wrote  ;  but  the  third 
Symphony  certainly  revealed  to  me,  not  altogether  a  new, 
but  a  complete  Brahms.  It  had  all  his  intellect  and  some- 
thing more ;  thought  had  taken  fire,  and  become  a  kind  of 
passion. 


184 


The  New  Bayreuth. 

IN  order  to  hear  and  see  Wagner  as  Wagner  wished  to 
be  heard  and  seen  it  is  no  longer  necessary  to  make  the 
pilgrimage  to  Bayreuth.  There  is  now  a  new  Bayreuth  at 
Munich,  and  at  Munich  one  is  not  thrown  so  entirely  on 
one's  own  resources  as  at  Bayreuth.  One  can  spend  the 
morning  at  the  Old  Pinakothek  with  either  Rubens  or 
Botticelli ;  or  at  the  Glyptothek  among  the  marbles  of 
Aegina,  as  if  among  young  children  of  the  gods ;  or  even 
at  that  <c  Secession "  exhibition,  which  can  hardly  be 
neglected  by  an  observer  of  the  modern  German  as  he  is 
and  as  he  would  be.  Then,  at  half-past  three,  one  drives 
up  the  winding  hill  of  the  Gasteig  to  the  square,  plain, 
grey  and  green  Prinz-Regenten-Theater,  which  is  an 
improved  copy  of  the  theatre  at  Bayreuth,  with  exactly  the 
same  amphitheatrical  arrangement  of  seats,  the  same  invisible 
orchestra,  the  same  vast  stage,  set  far  back,  the  same 
entrances,  the  same  system  of  numbering  the  seats  and  the 
cloak-room  seats  on  a  single  ticket.  Inside,  the  house  is 
built  of  grey  stone,  with,  in  the  main,  simple  decorations  in 
gold  and  green,  but  with  a  hideous  pictorial  roof,  like  the 
roof  of  a  hotel  dining-room.  There  is  a  restaurant,  opening 
out  of  the  circular  corridor  which  runs  round  the  building, 
and,  opening  out  of  the  restaurant,  a  square  garden,  green 
and  white,  which,  under  either  sunlight  or  electric  light,  is 
like  a  garden  in  a  picture. 

Everything  is  done  as  at  Bayreuth :  there  are  even  the 
three  "  fanfaren  "  at  the  doors  ;  there  is  the  same  punctual 
and  irrevocable  closing  of  the  doors  at  the  beginning  of 
185 


The  New  Bayreuth. 

each  act.  There  are  about  300  fewer  seats  in  the  theatre, 
and  the  seats  are  a  little  more  comfortable,  though  one 
realises,  after  a  few  hours,  that  wood  was  not  meant  for 
sitting  on  in  its  natural  state.  The  solemnity  of  the  whole 
thing  makes  one  almost  nervous,  for  the  first  few  minutes  of 
each  act ;  but,  after  that,  how  near  one  is,  in  this  perfectly 
darkened,  perfectly  quiet  theatre,  in  which  the  music  surges 
up  out  of  the  "  mystic  gulf,"  and  the  picture  exists  in  all 
the  ecstasy  of  a  picture  on  the  other  side  of  it,  beyond 
reality,  how  near  one  is  to  being  alone,  in  the  passive  state 
in  which  the  flesh  is  able  to  endure  the  great  burdening  and 
uplifting  of  vision  !  There  are  now  two  theatres  in  the 
world  in  which  music  and  drama  can  be  absorbed,  and  not 
merely  guessed  at.  That  this  second  one  exists  is  due 
largely  to  the  persistent  energy  of  Herr  von  Possart, 
Intendant  of  the  Royal  Bavarian  Theatres,  and  to  the 
liberality  of  the  Prince-Regent,  who  is  continuing  the  great 
tradition  of  the  mad  king  of  genius,  Ludwig  II.,  to  whom 
Wagner  owed  so  much  in  his  lifetime.  I  think  we  should 
forgive  Herr  von  Possart  for  his  rendering  of  "  Enoch 
Arden"  in  German,  to  the  too  literal  music  of  Richard 
Strauss,  on  that  recent,  unsuccessful  visit  to  London.  He 
has  done  a  great  work  here  in  Munich,  and  all  Europe  should 
be  grateful  to  him. 

I  reached  Munich  in  time  to  hear  the  two  last  perform- 
ances of  the  series,  "Tristan"  and  "Die  Meistersinger "  ; 
the  former  under  Herr  Franz  Fischer,  the  Jatter  under  Herr 
Hermann  Zumpe.  The  orchestra,  perhaps  especially  in 
"  Tristan,"  and  the  voices  and  chorus  in  "  Die  Meister- 
singer," were  equal  to  anything  I  have  ever  heard  in  a 
186 


The  New  Bayreuth. 

theatre  ;  and  Herr  Lautenschlager's  staging  was  quite  the 
best  of  its  kind  I  have  ever  seen.  "  Tristan  "  was  glorified 
by  Ternina,  who  is  both  a  great  singer  and  a  fine  actress, 
profoundly  passionate  as  both  ;  but  the  other  singers,  though 
good,  were  not  so  good  as  others  I  have  heard.  But  in 
"  Die  Meistersinger  "  every  singer  seemed  to  be  exactly  suited 
to  the  part,  and  every  singer  was  excellent.  Herr  Knote, 
with  his  great,  vivid  voice,  seemed  Walther  himself,  and 
Herr  Feinhals  the  actual  Hans  Sachs.  Herr  Geis  was  an 
admirable  Beckmesser ;  Frl.  Kloboth  did  charmingly  all 
that  was  to  be  done  with  Eva.  And  the  music,  as  it  rose 
out  of  the  depths,  came,  in  "  Tristan,"  wave  after  wave, 
breaking  and  rebounding,  in  "Die  Meistersinger"  like  the 
weaving  of  a  great  loom,  in  patterns  of  delicate  sound  ; 
music  in  which  one  heard  the  great  sweep  and  snap  of  the 
strings,  and  the  voice  of  every  wind,  each  distinct,  if  one 
listened  for  it,  and  all  swept  together  into  a  single  army, 
marching  victoriously.  Beyond  this  insurgent  host,  with  its 
cries  and  cannons,  its  armour  and  waving  flags,  moves  the 
picture,  which  at  times  reminded  me  of  a  Dilrer,  as  in  the 
group  of  sailors  on  Tristan's  ship,  when  Brangaene  draws 
aside  the  curtain  ;  it  was  always  a  German  picture,  with 
brilliant  colours,  vivid  effects,  and  an  amazing  reality  in  its 
buildings,  rippling  seas,  costumes,  moonlight  and  sunlight. 
If  we  are  to  have  realism  on  the  stage,  let  it  be  done  as  it  is 
done  here,  so  completely,  so  unobtrusively,  with  such  excel- 
lent taste  and  knowledge.  I  did  not  like  the  rippling  sea  in 
the  third  act  of  "  Tristan,"  but  it  was  at  least  better  done 
than  I  have  ever  seen  it  done.  In  "  Die  Meistersinger  "  the 
crowd  at  the  end,  and  the  apprentices'  fight  in  the  second 
187 


The  New  Bayreuth. 

act,  made  all  the  attempts  of  Mr.  Tree  seem  puny  and 
ineffectual.  Here,  better  than  at  Bayreuth,  was  the  typical 
modern  staging  done  perfectly ;  it  gave  one  a  certain  kind  of 
picture,  with  all  the  difference  that  exists,  in  painting  itself, 
between  good  and  bad  art,  if  one  compares  it  with  the  best 
English  and  French  staging.  And,  above  all,  it  was  signifi- 
cant, it  all  meant  something,  it  all  helped  to  bring  out 
Wagner's  meaning. 

It  is  only  when  Wagner  is  done  in  his  own  way  that  we 
can  realise  exactly  what  it  is  that,  he  has  achieved  in 
art.  Here,  undoubtedly,  was  unity  of  effect,  and,  here, 
it  could  not  be  said  that  any  one  art  interfered  with  any 
other  art.  The  music,  as  in  Nietzsche's  interpretation, 
was  the  "  Dionysiac  "  element,  the  vital  principle  ;  the  rest 
was  the  picture,  the  human  illusion,  which  the  music  held 
back  into  its  place,  on  the  other  side  of  the  gulf.  As  I  sat 
in  this  grave  and  discreet  theatre,  I  thought  with  horror  of 
the  whole  aspect  of  things  at  Covent  Garden :  the  house, 
constructed  for  fashionable  display,  with  its  light,  noise, 
and  disturbance ;  the  emphatic  orchestra,  incapable  of 
either  delicacy  or  precision,  playing  the  music  all  in  italics 
and  capitals  ;  the  pinched  and  gaudy  staging,  the  ludicrous 
costumes,  the  scarecrow  and  crow-voiced  chorus,  the  one 
or  two  star  singers ;  the  mangled  scores,  which  must  be 
got  through  between  dinner  and  midnight.  When  shall 
we  have  a  theatre  in  London  which  one  can  mention  on  the 
same  page  with  the  Prinz-Regenten-Theater  in  Munich  ? 


188 


Mozart  in  the  Mirabell-Garten. 

THEY  are  giving  a  cycle  of  Mozart  operas  at  Munich,  at 
the  Hof-Theater,  to  follow  the  Wagner  operas  at  the 
Prinz-Regenten-Theater ;  and  I  stayed,  on  my  way  to 
Salzburg,  to  hear  "  Die  Zauberflote."  It  was  perfectly 
given,  with  a  small,  choice  orchestra  under  Herr  Zumpe, 
and  with  every  part  except  the  tenor's  admirably  sung 
and  acted.  Herr  Julius  Zarest,  from  Hanover,  was 
particularly  good  as  Papageno ;  the  Eva  of  "  Die  Meister- 
singer  "  made  an  equally  good  Pamina.  And  it  was  staged, 
under  Herr  von  Possart's  direction,  as  suitably  and  as 
successfully,  in  its  different  way,  as  the  Wagner  opera  had 
been.  The  sombre  Egyptian  scenes  of  this  odd  story,  with 
its  menagerie  and  its  pantomime  transformation,  were  turned 
into  a  thrilling  spectacle,  and  by  means  of  nothing  but  a 
little  canvas  and  paint  and  limelight.  It  could  have  cost 
very  little,  compared  with  an  English  Shakespeare  revival, 
let  us  say ;  but  how  infinitely  more  spectacular,  in  the  good 
sense,  it  was  !  Every  effect  was  significant,  perfectly  in  its 
place,  doing  just  what  it  had  to  do,  and  without  thrusting 
itself  forward  for  separate  admiration.  German  art  of  to- 
day is  all  decorative,  and  it  is  at  its  best  when  it  is  applied 
to  the  scenery  of  the  stage.  Its  fault,  in  serious  painting, 
is  that  it  is  too  theatrical,  it  is  too  anxious  to  be  full  of  too 
many  qualities  besides  the  qualities  of  good  painting.  It  is 
too  emphatic,  it  is  meant  for  artificial  light.  If  Franz 
Stuck  would  paint  for  the  stage,  instead  of  using  his 
vigorous  brush  to  paint  nature  without  distinction  and 
nightmares  without  imagination  on  easel-canvases,  he  would 
189 


Mozart  in  the  Mirabell-Garten. 

do,  perhaps  rather  better,  just  what  these  scene-painters  do, 
with  so  much  skill  and  taste.  They  have  the  sense  of 
effective  decoration ;  and  German  art,  at  present,  is  almost 
wholly  limited  to  that  sense. 

I  listened,  with  the  full  consent  of  my  eyes,  to  the  lovely 
music,  which  played  round  the  story  like  light  transfiguring 
a  masquerade ;  and  now,  by  a  lucky  chance,  I  can  brood 
over  it  here  in  Salzburg,  where  Mozart  was  born,  where  he 
lived,  where  the  house  in  which  he  wrote  the  opera  is  to  be 
seen,  a  little  garden-house  brought  over  from  Vienna  and 
set  down  where  it  should  always  have  been,  high  up  among 
the  pine-woods  of  the  Capuzinerberg.  I  find  myself 
wondering  how  much  Mozart  took  to  himself,  how  much 
went  to  his  making,  in  this  exquisite  place,  set  in  a  hollow 
of  great  hills,  from  which,  if  you  look  down  upon  it,  it  has 
the  air  of  a  little  toy  town  out  of  a  Noah's  Ark,  set  square 
in  a  clean,  trim,  perfectly  flat  map  of  meadows,  with  its  flat 
roofs,  packed  close  together  on  each  side  of  a  long,  winding 
river,  which  trails  across  the  whole  breadth  of  the  plain. 
From  the  midst  of  the  town  you  look  up  everywhere  at 
heights ;  rocks  covered  with  pine-trees,  beyond  them  hills 
hooded  with  white  clouds,  great  soft  walls  of  darkness,  on 
which  the  mist  is  like  the  bloom  of  a  plum ;  and,  right 
above  you,  the  castle,  on  its  steep  rock  swathed  in  trees, 
with  its  grey  walls  and  turrets,  like  the  castle  which  one  has 
imagined  for  all  the  knights  of  all  the  romances.  All  this, 
no  doubt,  entered  into  the  soul  of  Mozart,  and  had  its 
meaning  for  him ;  but  where  I  seem  actually  to  see  him, 
where  I  can  fancy  him  walking  most  often,  and  hearing 
more  sounds  than  elsewhere  come  to  him  through  his  eyes 
190 


Mozart  in  the  Mirabell-Garten. 

and  his  senses,  is  the  Mirabell-Garten,  which  lies  behind  the 
palace  built  by  an  Archbishop  of  Salzburg  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  and  which  is  laid  out  in  the  conventional  French 
fashion,  with  a  harmony  that  I  find  in  few  other  gardens. 
I  have  never  walked  in  a  garden  which  seemed  to  keep  itself 
so  reticently  within  its  own  severe  and  gracious  limits.  The 
trees  themselves  seem  to  grow  naturally  into  the  pattern  of 
this  garden,  with  its  formal  alleys,  in  which  the  birds  fly  in 
and  out  of  the  trellised  roofs,  its  square-cut  bushes,  its  low 
stone  balustrades,  its  tall  urns  out  of  which  droop  trails  of 
pink  and  green,  its  round  flower-beds,  each  of  a  single 
colour,  set  at  regular  intervals  on  the  grass,  its  tiny  fountain 
dripping  faintly  into  a  green  and  brown  pool ;  the  long,  sad 
lines  of  the  Archbishop's  Palace,  off  which  the  brown  paint 
is  peeling ;  the  whole  sad  charm,  dainty  melancholy,  formal 
beauty,  and  autumnal  air  of  it.  It  was  in  the  Mirabell- 
Garten  that  I  seemed  nearest  to  Mozart. 

The  music  of  Mozart,  as  one  hears  it  in  "  Die  Zauber- 
flote,"  is  music  without  desire,  music  content  with  beauty, 
and  to  be  itself.  It  has  the  firm  outlines  of  Diirer  or  of 
Botticelli,  with  the  same  constraint  within  a  fixed  form,  if 
one  compares  it  with  the  Titian-like  freedom  and  splendour 
of  Wagner.  In  hearing  Mozart  I  saw  Botticell's  "  Entomb- 
ment," which  I  had  been  seeing  in  the  Munich  Gallery ;  in 
hearing  Wagner  I  had  seen  the  Titian  "  Scourging  of  Christ." 
Mozart  has  what  Coventry  Patmore  called  "a  glittering 
peace  "  :  to  Patmore  that  quality  distinguished  supreme  art, 
and,  indeed,  the  art  of  Mozart  is,  in  its  kind,  supreme.  It 
has  an  adorable  purity  of  form,  and  it  has  no  need  to  look 
outside  those  limits  which  it  has  found  or  fixed  for  itself. 
191 


Mozart  in  the  Mirabell- Garten. 

Mozart  cares  little,  as  a  rule,  for  what  he  has  to  express ; 
but  he  cares  infinitely  for  the  way  in  which  he  expresses 
everything,  and,  through  the  mere  emotional  power  of  the 
notes  themselves,  he  conveys  to  us  all  that  he  cares  to 
convey :  awe,  for  instance,  in  those  solemn  scenes  of  the 
priests  of  Isis.  He  is  a  magician,  who  plays  with  his 
magic,  and  can  be  gay,  out  of  mere  pleasant  idleness,  fooling 
with  Papagenus  as  Shakespeare  fools  in  "Twelfth  Night." 
"  Die  Zauberflo'te  "  is  really  a  very  fine  kind  of  pantomime, 
to  which  the  music  lends  itself  in  the  spirit  of  the  thing, 
yet  without  condescending  to  be  grotesque.  The  duet  of 
Papagenus  and  Papagena  is  absolutely  comic,  but  it  is  as 
lovely  as  a  duet  of  two  birds,  of  less  flaming  feather.  As 
the  lovers  ascend  through  fires  and  floods,  only  the  piping 
of  the  magic  flute  is  heard  in  the  orchestra :  imagine  Wagner 
threading  it  into  the  web  of  a  great  orchestral  pattern  !  For 
Mozart  it  was  enough,  and,  for  his  art,  it  was  enough.  He 
gives  you  harmony  which  does  not  need  to  mean  anything 
outside  itself,  in  order  to  be  supremely  beautiful ;  and  he 
gives  you  beauty  with  a  certain  exquisite  formality,  not 
caring  to  go  beyond  the  lines  which  contain  that  reticent, 
sufficient  charm  of  the  Mirabell-Garten. 


192 


An  Apology  for  Puppets. 

AFTER  seeing  a  ballet,  a  farce,  and  the  fragment  of  an 
opera  performed  by  the  marionettes  at  the  Costanzi 
Theatre  in  Rome,  I  am  inclined  to  ask  myself  why  we 
require  the  intervention  of  any  less  perfect  medium  between 
the  meaning  of  a  piece,  as  the  author  conceived  it,  and 
that  other  meaning  which  it  derives  from  our  reception  of 
it.  The  living  actor,  even  when  he  condescends  to  sub- 
ordinate himself  to  the  requirements  of  pantomime,  has 
always  what  he  is  proud  to  call  his  temperament ;  in  other 
words,  so  much  personal  caprice,  which  for  the  most 
part  means  wilful  misunderstanding ;  and  in  seeing  his 
acting  you  have  to  consider  this  intrusive  little  personality 
of  his  as  well  as  the  author's.  The  marionette  may  be 
relied  upon.  He  will  respond  to  an  indication  without  reserve 
or  revolt ;  an  error  on  his  part  (we  are  all  human)  will  cer- 
tainly be  the  fault  of  the  author ;  he  can  be  trained  to 
perfection.  As  he  is  painted,  so  will  he  smile  ;  as  the  wires 
lift  or  lower  his  hands,  so  will  his  gestures  be ;  and  he  will 
dance  when  his  legs  are  set  in  motion. 

Seen  at  a  distance,  the  puppets  cease  to  be  an  amusing 
piece  of  mechanism,  imitating  real  people ;  there  is  no 
difference.  I  protest  that  the  Knight  who  came  in  with  his 
plumed  hat,  his  shining  sword,  and  flung  back  his  long 
cloak  with  so  fine  a  sweep  of  the  arm,  was  exactly  the  same 
to  me  as  if  he  had  been  a  living  actor,  dressed  in  the  same 
clothes,  and  imitating  the  gesture  of  a  knight ;  and  that  the 
contrast  of  what  was  real,  as  we  say,  under  the  fiction 
appears  to  me  less  ironical  in  the  former  than  in  the  latter. 
193  N 


An  Apology  for  Puppets. 

We  have  to  allow,  you  will  admit,  at  least  as  much  to 
the  beneficent  heightening  of  travesty,  if  we  have  ever  seen 
the  living  actor  in  the  morning,  not  yet  shaved,  standing 
at  the  bar,  his  hat  on  one  side,  his  mouth  spreading  in 
that  abandonment  to  laughter  which  has  become,  from 
the  necessity  of  his  profession,  a  natural  trick  ;  oh,  much 
more,  I  think,  than  if  we  merely  come  upon  an  always 
decorative,  never  an  obtrusive,  costumed  figure,  leaning 
against  the  wall,  nonchalantly  enough,  in  a  corner  of  the 
coulisses. 

To  sharpen  our  sense  of  what  is  illusive  in  the  illusion  of 
the  puppets,  let  us  sit  not  too  far  from  the  stage.  Choosing 
our  place  carefully,  we  shall  have  the  satisfaction  of  always 
seeing  the  wires  at  their  work,  while  I  think  we  shall  lose 
nothing  of  what  is  most  savoury  in  the  feast  of  the 
illusion.  There  is  not  indeed  the  appeal  to  the  senses  of 
the  first  row  of  the  stalls  at  a  ballet  of  living  dancers. 
But  is  not  that  a  trifle  too  obvious  a  sentiment  for  the  true 
artist  in  artificial  things  ?  Why  leave  the  ball-room  ?  It 
is  not  nature  that  one  looks  for  on  the  stage  in  this  kind  of 
spectacle,  and  our  excitement  in  watching  it  should  remain 
purely  intellectual.  If  you  prefer  that  other  kind  of  illusion, 
go  a  little  further  away,  and,  I  assure  you,  you  will  find  it 
quite  easy  to  fall  in  love  with  a  marionette.  I  have  seen  the 
most  adorable  heads,  with  real  hair  too,  among  the  wooden 
dancers  of  a  theatre  of  puppets  ;  faces  which  might  easily, 
with  but  a  little  of  that  good-will  which  goes  to  all  falling  in 
love,  seem  the  answer  to  a  particular  dream,  making  all  other 
faces  in  the  world  but  spoilt  copies  of  this  inspired  piece  of 
painted  wood. 
194. 


An  Apology  for  Puppets. 

But  the  illusion,  to  a  more  scrupulous  taste,  will  consist 
simply  in  that  complication  of  view  which  allows  us  to  see 
wood  and  wire  imitating  an  imitation,  and  which  delights 
us  less  when  seen  at  what  is  called  the  proper  distance, 
where  the  two  are  indistinguishable,  than  when  seen  from 
just  the  point  where  all  that  is  crudely  mechanical  hides 
the  comedy  of  what  is,  absolutely,  a  deception.  Loosing,  as 
we  do,  something  of  the  particularity  of  these  painted 
faces,  we  are  able  to  enjoy  all  the  better  what  it  is  certainly 
important  we  should  appreciate,  if  we  are  truly  to 
appreciate  our  puppets.  This  is  nothing  less  than  a 
fantastic,  yet  a  direct,  return  to  the  masks  of  the  Greeks  ; 
that  learned  artifice  by  which  tragedy  and  comedy  were 
assisted  in  speaking  to  the  world  with  the  universal  voice, 
by  this  deliberate  generalising  of  emotion.  It  will  be  a 
lesson  to  some  of  our  modern  notions ;  and  it  may  be  in- 
structive for  us  to  consider  that  we  could  not  give  a  play 
of  Ibsen's  to  marionettes,  but  that  we  could  give  them  the 
"Agamemnon." 

Above  all,  for  we  need  it  above  all,  let  the  marionettes 
remind  us  that  the  art  of  the  theatre  should  be  beautiful 
first,  and  then  indeed  what  you  will  afterwards.  Gesture 
on  the  stage  is  the  equivalent  of  rhythm  in  verse,  and  it  can 
convey,  as  a  perfect  rhythm  should,  not  a  little  of  the  inner 
meaning  of  words,  a  meaning  perhaps  more  latent  in 
things.  Does  not  gesture  indeed  make  emotion,  more 
certainly  and  more  immediately  than  emotion  makes  gesture  ? 
You  may  feel  and  you  may  suppress  emotion ;  but  assume 
a  smile,  lifted  eyebrows,  a  clenched  fist,  and  it  is  impossible 
for  you  not  to  assume  along  with  the  gesture,  if  but  for  a 


An  Apology  for  Puppets. 

moment,  the  emotion  to  which  that  gesture  corresponds. 
In  our  marionettes,  then,  we  get  personified  gesture,  and  the 
gesture,  like  all  other  forms  of  emotion,  generalised.  The 
appeal  in  what  seems  to  you  these  childish  manceuvrers  is  to 
a  finer,  because  to  a  more  intimately  poetic,  sense  of  things 
than  the  merely  rationalistic  appeal  of  very  modern  plays. 
If  at  times  we  laugh,  it  is  with  wonder  at  seeing  humanity 
so  gay,  heroic,  and  untiring.  There  is  the  romantic  sugges- 
tion of  magic  in  this  beauty. 

Maeterlinck  wrote  on  the  title-page  of  one  of  his  volumes 
"  Drames  pour  marionnettes,"  no  doubt  to  intimate  his 
sense  of  the  symbolic  value,  in  the  interpretation  of  a 
profound  inner  meaning,  of  that  external  nullity  which  the 
marionette  by  its  very  nature  emphasises.  And  so  I  find 
my  puppets,  where  the  extremes  meet,  ready  to  interpret 
not  only  the  "  Agamemnon,"  but  "  La  Mort  de  Tinta- 
giles "  ;  for  the  soul,  which  is  to  make,  we  may  suppose, 
the  drama  of  the  future,  is  content  with  as  simple  a  mouth- 
piece as  Fate  and  the  great  passions,  which  were  the  classic 
drama. 


196 


By  the  same  Writer. 

Poems.     (Collected  Edition  in  two  Volumes,) 

An    Introduction    to  the   Study   of   Browning.      (Out   of 

Print.) 

Studies  in  Two  Literatures.     (Out  of  Print.) 
The  Symbolist  Movement  in  Literature. 
Cities.     (In  the  Press.) 


In   Preparation  : 

Tristan  and  Iseult.     A  Tragedy  in  Verse,  in  Four  Acts. 
Spiritual  Adventures. 
Studies  in  the  Seven  Arts. 

A  History  of  English  Poetry  in  the  Nineteenth  Century. 
Volume  I.,  The  Georgian  Age. 


Printed  by 

BALLANTYNE,  HANSON  <&»  Co. 
London  &•"  Edinburgh 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY.  LOS 

Of 


HQM 


Book  81ip-35m-7,M 


Library 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


A     001  061  514     4 


j        PN 
2021 

UCLA-Coll«ge  Library 

PN  2021  S98p  1903 


L  005  761  495  0 


